Lay Me Down
by rhombus
Summary: Kish AU. Kyle and Oliver in the Old West. Why not, right? *WIP*
1. Chapter 1: The Vow

**Lay Me Down**

_**Chapter One - The Vow**_

**

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Croop County, Montana Territory. 1884.

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**

Deputy Keaton hoisted the piss bucket off the floor and, with a yellow-toothed grin, hurled it across the dark, dank cell, spattering the walls and the mud-black ground. The bucket clanked against moldy stone then rolled to a stop in the corner. The hay-stuffed cot looked particularly soaked by Keaton's efforts.

Kyle tried not to breathe, but it was useless. The bitter reek of ammonia and nitrates had already clung to the inside of his nostrils, to his mouth, and it wasn't gonna go away any time soon.

Keaton shoved him hard in the back, and he stumbled into the cell. Squaring his shoulders, Kyle turned to face him and thrust his shackled wrists forward. The heavy metal clattered against the bars. "You gonna take these off now?"

"Nope." Keaton spit a wad of tobacco onto the grimy wooden floor. Specks of it darkened Kyle's boots. He eyed Kyle up and down, a pernicious squint that told Kyle just how very little he thought of him. "Scum like you, can't risk it." He slammed the cell door shut, twisted the steel lock into place, and with one last baleful stare walked out of the jailhouse. Kyle could hear him whistling a jaunty tune just outside the front entry.

A heavy sigh rocked his chest—a mistake, as it only allowed the pungent odor of stale urine deeper entrance into his lungs.

He looked around. The cell was confining, little more than five-by-five feet. The back wall was built of thick stone, and the small cot butted right up against it. A line of metal bars closed him in on the other three sides. He felt like an animal in a cage, wasting away in filth and savage isolation.

He glanced at the soaked cot. Under it's fresh coat of piss, the top layer of fabric was covered in all manner of dark, foreboding stains. But there was nothing to be done for it. He was dead tired, limbs aching from the struggle, his wrists and ankles chafed and red under the weight of his shackles. He slowly lowered himself down onto the edge of the mattress, trying to avoid the areas heaviest with damp, and sat with his hands on his lap. His head hung low, chin to chest, and he breathed shallowly, through the mouth, trying to calm his beating heart.

This was his life. He was here, in this jail cell. There was nothing he could do about, nothing he could've done differently to avoid it. Well, nothing he _would've_ done differently, if the universe presented him with a second chance. But it didn't matter anyway. There was no going back.

The whistling stopped. A murmur of voices drifted in from the outside. Keaton and someone else. Kyle recognized the timbre, the flow of the words, and his heart jumped in his chest... before it sank back down.

Slow, heavy footsteps entered the jailhouse, accompanied by the jangle of spurs on wood. He didn't look up. He couldn't. He was too tired; it was too painful.

"So it's true," the newcomer said, his voice drenched in... was it sadness? Maybe more of a simmering anger.

Kyle wasn't prepared for what that voice would do to him. His throat dried up, his eyes stung—but maybe that was just from the overpowering stench. His breath seemed caught in his stomach. He tried to make himself look up, but he couldn't. He was scared—so scared of what he'd see if he looked into those eyes.

"Deputy Fish," he managed to croak out.

"Kyle."

His head snapped up—against his will. He hadn't expected Fish to address him with such... intimacy.

He expected the anger in his friend's gaze. That was no surprise, and it didn't hurt him at all. It was the disappointment, the _overwhelming_ disappointment he saw there that knocked a leaden pang through his chest.

"Come to say hello to your old pal?" He laughed, weakly. Taking a moment to observe his oldest friend, he noticed the changes of time with an empty sort of curiosity. He looked older, certainly more mature with that layer of fuzz on his face. His hands, thumbs tucked into his belt near his worn leather holster and pistol, were darker, less refined, damaged by long days in the sun and manual labor; something Kyle was sure they weren't used to. The deputy's star pinned to his vest glimmered a bit under the jail's flickering torchlight. It was the only thing that didn't look out of place on him. The only thing that seemed especially _right_.

"Kyle." Fish shifted his weight, his spurs tinging with each tiny movement. Darkness clouded his eyes. Darkness and distrust. "What have you gotten yourself into?"

Kyle's head fell toward his chest again. He hadn't known it was possible for a man to feel this much shame.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do it. I didn't mean to hurt anyone."

The wooden floor groaned as Fish took a small step forward. "You killed a man."

Kyle's breath hitched in his throat. "I know." His lungs ached. He couldn't breathe properly. There wasn't enough air—enough clean air—in the space.

"They're gonna..." Fish cleared his throat. His voice sounded wet. Thick. Emotional. "They're gonna hang you tomorrow."

"I know, Oliver." He paused, looked up again, and felt a warm, unwanted tear slip down his cheek. "I know."

* * *

**Lakeside Ranch, Montana. 1871.****  
****Kyle Lewis, age 8.

* * *

**

"Bang! Bang! You're dead!"

Kyle limped halfway to the ground and stared at Sheriff Ollie, his wooden revolver still raised in a fierce pose, with pitiful eyes.

"Aghh! Ya shot me, Sheriff! Ya shot me..." He gasped dramatically, then slowly raised himself back upright. "...right in my little toe." He grinned, hobbling away from his enemy, his shoes kicking up dust along the worn patch of last year's grazing land.

Ollie growled. Then he chased after him. Or tried to. Kyle, giving up the injured-ruse, was faster, and Ollie was quick to lose his breath in the pursuit. "Get back here!" he whined, clutching his chest with chubby fingers.

Kyle slowed, turned around, and smiled at him. "You want me? You gotta get me, Sheriff. Thems the rules!"

It was a warm, dry day out, the sun baking the ground, all the birds off and away, huddled in the limbs of the buckthorn trees circling the lake shore on the other side of the Fish family ranch.

Kyle took a moment to bask in the sun, tilting his head up and closing his eyes. His pa was busy tending to the cattle with Hector and Luis, and it was one of the first days since spring started when he was able to sneak away without being seen, and take Ollie with him.

When he opened his eyes again, he was met with the business end of Ollie's revolver. The wood felt warm and scratchy against his forehead as Ollie pressed it in.

"Bang."

Kyle fell to the ground and held as still as possible. He enjoyed the feel of the earth beneath him, the sun on his face. Ollie gently prodded his leg with his shoe. Kyle remained still, accepting his death for what it was.

"Kyle."

He didn't answer. He tried to slow his breathing instead.

"Kyle. Get up." Another kick to his leg, this time a little harder. Kyle tried not to smile. "Come on. Let's play again."

It was too much fun making Ollie impatient. He could picture his friend's face, red and squishy, his round cheeks puffing out with his annoyance.

A shadow passed over his face, and he knew that Ollie was leaning over him, could hear his heavy breathing. "You—you okay, Kyle?"

Kyle cracked one eye open, just barely, just enough to catch the hint of fear in Ollie's face. Trying to remain absolutely still, he finally opened his eyes and launched up, yelling, "_Boo!_"

"Ahhhhh!" Ollie scrambled backwards, losing his footing as his shoe caught on a rock half-dug out of the ground. He toppled backward, arms flailing, and landed with a loud thump.

Kyle's whole body rocked with laughter, and he was having trouble catching his breath. He wiped the back of his hand against his watering eyes. "Fooled ya, didn't I?" he asked, expecting a huffy protest in return.

But Ollie just lay there. Motionless. Quiet.

Until a small whimper escaped.

Kyle felt something lurch in his chest, something primitive and protective and guilty. He clambered up, crawled over to where Ollie was lying, and crouched over him.

He brought a hand up to Ollie's cheek, contorted with pain, and let it hover for a moment, unsure of what to do. He took a deep breath, then brought the hand down, letting his fingers gently smooth the tight muscles in Ollie's face. Then he reached underneath him and helped lift him into a sitting position.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt ya."

Ollie just nodded, squeezing his eyes shut. Kyle didn't know what to do. His chest felt all hot with shame and remorse.

"Want me to... to go get your ma?" he asked.

Ollie's eyes popped open. They were red and wet looking. He shook his head very quickly. "Please don't!" he cried out. And that's when little droplets of tears escaped down his cheek. His chest hitched wildly, and he looked like he was in the most incredible pain.

Kyle's hands were back again, this time ghosting along Ollie's arm, where he could see red, angry scrapes that threatened to break the skin. "Where does it hurt?"

"No—nowhere. I'm okay."

He looked anything but okay. Kyle knew the heaviness in his own chest wouldn't go away unless he made it up to Ollie.

"What's wrong then?"

Ollie hid his tear-streaked face behind his dirty hands. "I'm not—not s'posed to cry."

"Says who?"

"My—my pa," he gasped out. "He says I won't make myself a man. He says—he says I'm no son of his."

Kyle bit his lip. He thought maybe he knew what he could do to help. To make up for his crime.

"I cry," he said.

Ollie's sobs stopped almost immediately. He squinted at Kyle, like he was some sort of new creature he had never seen before. "You do?"

Kyle nodded. "I cried when my ma went to heaven."

"And your pa didn't whup you?"

"Nah." Kyle looked down at his hands, then back up at Ollie. "He cried too."

"I guess..." He sniffed loudly and wetly. "I guess we're just different."

"I guess," Kyle conceded. A strong gust of wind swept over their heads, and Kyle thought he heard voices in the distance, the familiar sounds of his pa and Hector and Luis grunting orders at each other in Spanish. If they were headed in this direction, he and Ollie'd have to get a move on. They weren't supposed to be playing on the grazing land, because it had to rest up for next year. He needed to get Ollie up, needed to get him moving again. What he really needed was a quick way to square things between them and make Ollie feel better again. He closed his eyes, and that's when an idea came to him.

"I think I know what to do." He reached out, very slowly, and wiped Ollie's cheeks with his palm, gathering up the tears. Ollie stared at him, open-mouthed, and said nothing as Kyle smeared the wetness over his own cheeks. "There," Kyle said with a curt nod. "You ain't crying anymore."

Ollie looked at him with his big, blue eyes, still shiny with tears but also round with wonder. "Okay."

"Ollie?"

"Yeah."

"Anytime you feel like crying, you can just come find me, and I'll take your tears. And then you'll be okay."

He sucked in his lip and nodded. "Okay."

"You feel better?"

"Yeah."

"Good." He patted Ollie on the knee. It seemed like the right thing to do. Then he moved to get up. He didn't want his pa finding them there.

Ollie's voice stopped him. "Wait!"

"What?"

"Don't... don't go. Please don't... leave me alone."

"Ollie." He sat back down, took Ollie's hand, intertwining their fingers. He looked out across the empty distance. Maybe they had a few minutes to spare. "I'm not gonna leave ya."

"You promise?" His bottom lip trembled. Kyle didn't know why it was so important to Ollie, but he knew in his own heart that he wanted to give Ollie anything he needed to make him feel better. He liked it when Ollie smiled. He didn't know how else to explain it, but it was like someone shined sunlight on the dark places inside him when Ollie smiled at him.

"I promise." He gripped Ollie's hand tighter. "I promise before God, I won't leave you." Suddenly, he brought their joined hands up to his mouth and laid a quick kiss on Ollie's knuckles. It's what his ma used to do to make him feel better, before she went to be closer with God.

Ollie nodded silently. Another tear slipped down his cheek. Without a word, Kyle swiped it away with his fingers and rubbed it onto his own cheek, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do.

He took a deep breath and looked Ollie right in the eye. "Will you do the same?"

"The same?"

"Promise me."

Ollie nodded. "I promise. I won't leave you neither."

"Before God?"

"Yeah. I promise before God."

Satisfied that things were square between them, Kyle brought their locked hands up to Oliver's chest and knocked against it lightly.

"You die—" Then he brought their fists to his own chest. "—I die."

Ollie's brows creased, and he looked down at their hands like he'd never seen a hand before in his life. "What?"

"It's the end of the oath," Kyle said. "It means we'll never break it."

"Oh."

"Say it."

Ollie stared at him, a determined look in his eyes, then repeated Kyle's actions, bumping first Kyle's chest, then his own. "Y-You die, I die."

Without knowing why, Kyle darted forward and pecked him on the cheek. Then he was up and off, sprinting a few yards away before turning and smiling at his confused friend.

"You gonna catch me, Lawman? I'm the _no_-torious kissin' bandit!"

That brought a grin to Ollie's face, and then he was up too, wiping the dirt off the back of his pants. He reached for his dropped revolver and started jogging after him. "Hold it right there, you dirty varmint!"

Ollie smiled, and just like always, it put sunshine in Kyle's dark places. He jetted off again, warm wind ruffling his hair. And as they ran through the fields, yelling and laughing together, Kyle couldn't help but think to himself, _He'll be my best friend until the day I die._

_

* * *

(...TBC...)_


	2. Chapter 2: Our Own Place

**Lay Me Down**

_**Chapter Two - Our Own Place**_

**

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Lakeside Ranch, Montana Territory. 1874.****  
****Oliver Fish, age 11.

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**

He stood on his tiptoes and gripped the carved wood of the door jamb, afraid to speak, but knowing he would have to do it eventually. The wood beneath his fingers was hard and cold—like his father's face as he sat at his desk and read over the latest numbers in his ledger. Oliver tipped back down onto his heels, and his shoes clicked against the floor a little too loudly. His father looked up, eyes like steel.

"What is it, son?"

Oliver opened his mouth, but it was dry, and the words he wanted were beyond reach. He looked around his father's study with wide eyes, at the shelves full of leather-bound books, the important looking documents on his desk, the ink well and the roll of blotting paper. The room smelled of oranges and dust. It was an adult's room, and his small boot-clad feet were reluctant to enter.

"I don't have all day." His father narrowed his eyes. "And take off your hat. Isn't that school of yours teaching you anything about respect?"

Oliver quickly tugged off his hat, holding it behind his back with sweaty, nervous fingers. His knees itched where the thick hem of his linen breeches scraped against his skin, but he didn't dare reach down and scratch. Such an impropriety would not be smiled on in the presence of such a great, stern man as his father.

"May I—" he began, a little unsteadily. He closed his fist tight around his hat and tried again. "May I have some paper?"

That caused his father to stop what he was doing, his prized fountain pen poised an inch above its intended destination. Oliver gulped. The backs of his knees were suddenly very clammy.

"Paper, Oliver? For what purpose?"

With only the slightest tremble in his voice, he settled into his predetermined, practiced response. "I want to run the numbers. On the cattle." He'd heard his father say it in the past, so he knew it meant something, but he wasn't exactly sure what. Not that it mattered.

A slow smile spread over his father's face. The sight of it warmed Oliver's chest. The smile twitched into a chuckle, and the fountain pen was laid on the desk, a sheet of thin, yellowish paper plucked from the short stack.

"That's some initiative, boy," his father said. Oliver marveled at the size of his father's hand compared to his own as the paper was transferred from one to the other. "We'll make a man of you yet, despite your mother's attempts to baby you forever."

Oliver gulped then spit out a very rushed thank you. He was halfway through the door when he remembered.

"Sir," he said, turning quickly. "Will you cut a pencil for me? For—for the numbers?"

He watched very intently as his father moved the knife around the wooden tip of the pencil. He made it look so easy, like he was cutting through a stick of table butter. Oliver wanted to be that strong some day, to speak with the same sort of authority, to do everything with a sense of purpose, with confidence. He believed he might, when he was older, a man—like his father said, but it always seemed so far off.

Pencil and paper finally in hand, he marched out of the study and into his bedroom, sat at his desk, and began drawing. He kept one eye on the longcase clock in the main room, which he could just make out from his chair when he tilted his head the right way. There was only a small window of opportunity to get this done before he had to leave. His fingers moved quickly, but steadily; he could picture exactly in his head what he wanted to see on the paper, and his hands followed orders particularly well that morning.

The clock struck seven-fifteen, and he knew his time was up. But he was pleased with his work. More than pleased. He'd never been more proud of anything he'd ever created. He quickly folded it into neat quarters and shoved it into the leafs of one of his books, then gathered together everything he needed for the long march to the schoolhouse.

Salma, Hector's wife, was already waiting for him outside, her long orange skirts fluttering in the early morning breeze. Oliver looked around quickly, a sudden unexplained fear in his heart, until he saw Kyle as well, leaning against a fence post, sucking lazily on a piece of straw. The fear receded, like goosebumps by a fire, and he cursed himself for being so silly. Kyle would always be there. He knew that, deep in his bones.

Salma pursed her lips and waved him forward.

"Quickly, child," she said, her voice deep, heavy with her thick South American accent. "You are late. Your mother would fall over dead like a log if you were ever late to school."

Oliver shrugged off the threat easily enough, but he saw Kyle's chin fall, his face gone slack, his eyes shaded with sorrow. And for half a second Oliver fumed silently at Salma for so callously mentioning dead mothers. But like his earlier fear, the anger subsided fairly quickly, replaced by his usual quiet affection for her.

She'd been his nursemaid, almost a second mother to him growing up, constantly cooing over him and sneaking him tastes of dinner while she cooked. He indulged in childhood memories of crawling under her skirts, clutching her bare legs—always unclad, never hidden by stockings like his mother's—the coarse scrape of her leg hairs somehow comforting, as if she were a real human mother, and not a porcelain doll come to life.

Though, he couldn't help but feel a stone of guilt sink in his gut. For his unintentional gluttony (he'd learned that word from the bible), for somehow being blessed with two mothers, while Kyle had none to go home to.

But he envied Kyle (another sin), for living free of the burden of expectation. Mr. Lewis didn't hound his boy. Kyle was free to do and be what he liked.

Sometimes Oliver felt like a shadow following someone else's movement, his life mapped out by his parents... yet the path wasn't clear to him. He expected all the disappointment of one, and shook with fear at the thought of rousing it in the other. Trapped by expectation, expectation of failure and greatness both. He longed for something in between—to live a good life, to be happy, to make others happy, to keep his loved ones safe. A vision came to him—the drawing folded in the pages of his schoolbook—and his chest swelled with contentment. He didn't need anything more than that.

Maybe that was Kyle's influence on him. Or Salma's. Though they would've come at it separately; they weren't close. Salma wasn't the mother to Kyle that Oliver secretly hoped she would become—to take over his care, make more even the spread of mothering, and maybe make Oliver's accidental guilt slip away, too. It seemed only fair to him, since he figured Mrs. Lewis was taking care of Salma's girl, Esperanza, in heaven.

But Kyle and Salma, as usual, ignored each other as they walked along the dusty path toward the end of the property. Scrubby, graying plants lined the main road, growing closer with each quick step they took. Salma kept her warm, rough fingers on the back of Oliver's neck. Kyle trailed along a few yards behind, kicking stones at Oliver's boots. When one hit its target, Oliver pivoted on his toes and grinned at him. Kyle dipped his head, hiding his own smile, when Salma turned slowly to glance at him with pitch-black eyes.

Vague memories sometimes flashed through Oliver's mind, memories of Kyle's sister walking them along the now-familiar path, before—he'd learned later—Rebecca Lewis left home to join the convent, a few short months after Mrs. Lewis grew so thin and cold and finally passed on. It seemed right to him that Rebecca followed her to God, finding the love and guidance a mother would give in the womb of the church.

Oliver had never known Mrs. Lewis, but had seen her from a distance; she sometimes seemed to float through the air, ghost-like. He'd been very young, and her image frightened him, she and Mr. Lewis both, those strange, faraway adults who lived in the workers' quarters on his father's land and never spoke a single word to him. He wondered how someone so alive like Kyle had come from the pale, withdrawn specters that were his parents. With Rebecca, he thought he could remember a resemblance.

And with Rebecca's departure, the task of walking the boys fell on Salma—Salma who was already in charge of the housekeeping, the cooking, the washing, the clothes-mending, the medicine-making when someone fell ill, Salma who was already stretched so thin across their land, in every crack of the earth, in every corner of their home. The added duty made her sore; Oliver could tell.

He also thought, maybe, she blamed the Lewises, could see it in the unusual coldness of her eyes when one was around, or mentioned in conversation. She blamed the mother for dying, the father for lingering, the daughter for leaving, the son for existing. Oliver didn't know how to express these thoughts, and even if he could, he wouldn't know who to express them to, so he kept quiet, observed, waited.

If Kyle noticed or cared, he rarely showed it. He always had a smile or a clever remark ready, his only aim to please Oliver—Oliver knew, he was sure—on their morning treks to school and their evening treks home.

The land sloped up, hard clay giving way to softer dirt, and a breeze brought with it the crisp smell of apple and cherry blossoms. Clear signs they had reached the southern-most tip of the Lord Estate. A great man lived there, with his grand daughters and noble sons, and they rode through their private countryside in a carriage with golden wheels pulled by the largest white horses in all the United States. Or so Oliver had been told. By Kyle, who had said it with such wonder and confidence that Oliver had wanted very badly to believe him, even if he didn't quite.

It was also said there was a standing order to shoot any trespassers on sight.

Salma knelt in front of Oliver and cupped his shoulders, then ran a calloused, brown hand through his hair. "_Cuidado, mijo_. Stay on the road. Be good. Your mother could not live anymore with a bad son."

Each day she said it, always in the same place, in the same urgent way, as if new threats bloomed every morning. Oliver sucked in his lip and nodded his head solemnly. He wanted to be good.

As Salma turned to leave, her skirts swishing with each solid movement of her thick legs, Kyle called out, "_¡Adios, abuela!_" Salma paused, but she did not turn back, nor did she say anything in return. Oliver wanted her to. He always hoped; he was forever hopeful the tide would turn and they would somehow love each other.

Kyle grinned at Salma's retreating form, his arms crossed over his chest triumphantly, as if he had gotten exactly the response he'd wanted.

"What's that mean? Abuela?"

"Oh, you know," Kyle said, shoving his hands in his oversized pockets—his trousers were always just a little too big on him. He toed the dirt absently. "It's just Spanish."

Oliver frowned. He didn't like being lied to. "I know that. What does it mean?"

"Just... lady. Older lady."

"Like broo-hah?"

Kyle's eyes widened. "_Bruja_? You didn't call her that, did you?"

Oliver looked at Kyle, at his worried expression, and wondered. "You've called her that. I've heard you. It's not... bad, is it?"

"No," Kyle said quickly. "Well... maybe a little. Don't call her that, okay?" He took a step toward Oliver, reached out a hand, but let it hover without quite touching him. "You promise?"

Oliver stared at Kyle's hand, smaller than his own. He thought, for half a second, of making the small movement forward it would take to bring that hand to his arm, but the sound of school bells in the distance distracted him, pulled him back, made his heart pound even more wildly in his chest. They were going to be late if they didn't hurry.

"C'mon," he said, jogging a few feet down the road. Kyle remained where he was, his hands returned to his trouser pockets.

"Promise me," Kyle called out to him.

"I promise." He urged Kyle forward with a frantic gesture. "Let's go. We can't be late." He remembered Salma's ominous threat. If he ever did anything to hurt his mother... No. He _had_ to be good. Always. For her.

Kyle nodded, satisfied, then started running too. He always asked for promises, Oliver noticed. Oliver always agreed, and Kyle always believed him. Oliver always meant it, too, but it still felt good to be trusted that way. And he trusted Kyle too—to be the one who would always believe in him. To always be there.

They were out of breath when they careened up the rickety wooden stairs and through the large open doors of the single-room schoolhouse. The younger children were already there, sitting quietly in the front chairs. Kyle and Oliver took their places in the row for their grade. The clock ticked ever closer to eight. They had just made it.

Suddenly, Oliver remembered the drawing in his books. He pulled it out and shoved it, still crisply folded, at Kyle.

"What's this?" Kyle eyed it suspiciously. He turned it over in his fingers, but didn't unfold it.

"A present." Oliver blushed, glancing down at his lap then quickly back up at Kyle. "Happy birthday."

A slow smile spread across Kyle's face, his teeth peeking out to pull at his lower lip. He stretched the paper flat on his desk and studied it. Oliver could see his brain working, trying to make sense of it.

He leaned over and whispered, so as not to be heard by the other students, "That's you, and that's me." He pointed out the two adult figures in the middle of the page, their arms resting on each others' shoulders in a brotherly embrace. "And that's the ranch."

"The Lakeside?"

Oliver shrugged. "It's the one we're gonna have together. Someday. It'll be all our own. Yours and mine." He could see Kyle's chest move up and down very quickly, as if he were suddenly having trouble breathing. "Do you—do you like it?"

"Oliver, I—"

He was cut off by the sound of the final school bell. Miss LaMott stood from her desk, smoothed down the hair pulled tight behind her ears, and eyed the students with a kind, but firm, gaze.

"Eyes up, ears open, children."

Kyle quickly snapped his mouth shut, but he reached over and brushed his fingers against Oliver's before sitting up very straight in his chair.

Oliver's knuckles felt incredibly warm from the touch; the warmth moved up his arm and finally settled in his chest. It was so strong, he thought it might stay there with him all day.

Miss LaMott wiped her hands on her skirt-apron and opened up the large bible that rested grandly on a stand in the front of classroom. There was always a reading first, right at eight a.m., followed by the eighth graders' lessons, then the seventh, and so on, while all the others worked on their letters, or did their reading assignments, or took turns looking up vocabulary words in the school's dictionary.

Oliver stayed focused; he enjoyed being read to. Miss LaMott had a clear, sweet voice, and she spoke very well. But, every once in a while, he couldn't help but glance over at Kyle—who was not being as good a student as Oliver. His eyes were not up, and Oliver very much doubted his ears were open. Instead, his whole being seemed to concentrate on the drawing Oliver had given him. His fingers gently skimmed the outline of the two figures and a secretive smile played across his lips.

Pride surged in Oliver's chest, amplified by the warmth already there. He had made that smile. It was his. He claimed it.

He had been brave and asked his father for paper. His hands had been steady and obedient and drawn exactly what he wanted them to. It made him feel as if becoming a man, becoming strong and purposeful like his father, maybe wasn't so far off after all.

Miss LaMott's voice brought him out of his thoughts. He sat up straighter and swallowed quickly. He hadn't paid as close attention to the reading as he should have. He made a promise to himself to be extra attentive for tomorrow morning's reading.

"Eighth graders to the front," Miss LaMott said, her tone clipped with daily practice. "Everyone else, I want to see chalk. Work on your assignments quietly. No talking, no distractions. If I see anyone without chalk, they will be sorry for it." The slightest tick of her arm brought the whole room's attention to the switch hanging ominously from the wall. "You understand?"

"Yes, Miss LaMott," everyone recited together.

Everyone except Kyle, who was still rapt by the drawing. Oliver felt a sudden panic for him. He stomped his boot on the ground loudly. That worked. Kyle's head came up and he quickly grabbed his chalk out of the holder and began copying down a passage from the open book on his desk, while his free hand covertly folded the drawing and slipped it into the back pocket of his trousers. Oliver looked up in haste, his own chalk in hand, and breathed a sigh of relief. Miss LaMott's head was turned; she hadn't seen the delay. They were safe.

He began immersing himself in the work when a pair of dainty boots clicked up next to his desk, between him and Kyle.

"Lewis, come with me please," Miss LaMott said, her voice hard, but somehow sad, too, like she was acting against her own will. Oliver glanced up. She clutched the switch in her folded hands, a frown deep-set in her face.

Kyle looked down at his work and seemed to realize what he'd done wrong. He dropped the chalk with a heavy sigh and stood, not a single argument poised on his tongue. Oliver had no idea what was going on. He tried to keep his head down, but curiosity and worry got the better of him. His gaze followed the two out of the classroom, down the steps, until they were completely out of sight.

He flinched when he heard the sharp thwack of the switch against flesh, and then the quiet, muffled sound of pain. Voices drifted up into the room. The younger students had their heads fully turned, their eyes wide with fear; the older students kept at their tasks.

_"I won't..."_ he thought he heard Kyle say. _"I swear. I won't use it again. You don't have to..."_

Oliver squinted. Use what, he wondered.

_"It's the only way to make you learn. You_ must _learn."_

Oliver sat rock-still, immobilized by confusion. Kyle was usually very studious. He liked learning and was always eager to do well. He didn't understand why Miss LaMott would punish him for not learning when he'd clearly been doing his work.

Maybe she'd seen the picture somehow. Maybe she thought Kyle had drawn it during class.

Oliver's mouth dried up like clay under the summer sun. His heart grew heavy; his eyes suddenly stung.

Miss LaMott marched Kyle back into the classroom, his left arm strapped uncomfortably behind his back.

"Back to work, children," she said sweetly, and every stub of chalk was raised and scratching against slate again in less than one heavy heartbeat.

Oliver, too, kept his head down, concentrated hard on his studies. He didn't dare look up. Shame crept over his cheeks, and the pleasant warmth he felt in his chest earlier now burned him up painfully inside.

It was his fault Kyle had been punished. When he finally dared a peek, Kyle wouldn't look back at him. He stared straight down, gripping his chalk with his right hand, concentrating very hard on his letters, but Oliver saw that his hand shook, just the slightest tremble, but it was there. And though he told himself not to glance over, to instead concentrate on his own work, he found his gaze drifting over to Kyle more and more, involuntarily, completely against his will, it seemed. He didn't know why... but maybe... maybe he hoped Kyle would look back at him, would smile at him again, would forgive him.

Kyle's eyes didn't budge from his work. Oliver glimpsed the restrained hand, red and swollen from punishment; the fingers stretched for the back pocket, slipped inside, and Oliver could see Kyle's shoulders relax a bit, but he still didn't turn Oliver's way. It took everything Oliver had to hold back the tears he wasn't allowed to shed.

At the end of the day, Miss LaMott released Kyle's arm. He flexed the wrist, rolled it to loosen the muscles, then mumbled a very quiet, "Thank you, Miss LaMott."

They walked home in silence. Salma met them at the edge of the Lord Estate and walked between them the whole time.

Oliver slept fitfully that night. He couldn't turn his brain off or make the guilt subside. He'd done bad. He told Salma he wouldn't. He'd caused Kyle to get hurt, to maybe even lose his trust in him. And all for what? A drawing?

His chest ached. He was still proud of the drawing. He couldn't stop, even when he knew the trouble it caused. He tried to regret it, to somehow atone for it, but he couldn't. He woke the next morning as miserable as he could ever remember.

Salma had laid out his freshly washed knee-breeches for him, and a matching jacket, and he dressed himself listlessly, without much energy or anticipation for the day ahead. The only thing that got him out of the door was the thought of seeing Kyle, of apologizing to him, or maybe just smiling at him and being smiled at in return.

Another morning, another breeze fluttering Salma's skirts. He turned to the post where Kyle had stood yesterday. But the post stood alone. He wasn't there. Fear gripped Oliver's heart.

"Where's—?"

"Kyle is not coming today," Salma said before he could finish. "He has other work to do. Now, be good today, _mijo_. Be a very good boy for your mother."

Oliver closed his eyes and dropped his head, feeling like the worst, smallest person in the world. He tried to snap out of it, to be good, but all throughout the day he couldn't seem to remove his gaze from Kyle's empty desk.

The heat in his chest, was changing, though, as each hour ticked on. It was no longer fanned by shame, but a growing anger. Anger at Kyle for not being where he was supposed to be. This heat wasn't his to begin with anyway. Kyle had put it in him.

He had to talk to him, to get all these feelings out of his chest and put them back on Kyle, where they belonged. He found him in the early evening, struggling with a bag of feed near the hen house. The sun sank low, stretching for the horizon, painting the wide open sky in a river of oranges and purples and grays. Kyle's left hand couldn't find a good grip around the burlap, and it kept slipping halfway down his shoulder.

"You weren't at school today."

Kyle paused, readjusted the bag against his neck, and chuckled. "You noticed that, huh?"

"And that's... fine?"

Kyle shrugged a shoulder, but didn't say anything.

His silence squeezed the anger in Oliver's chest until it felt like it was going to pop.

"How're you supposed to learn and _be_ somebody if you don't go to school, Kyle?"

Kyle squinted at him, then finally gave up on the feed bag and lowered it to the ground. "Only had one more year left anyway," he said calmly, shoving his hands in his pockets. He suddenly winced, then pulled out the left hand and let it hang limp by his side instead.

"What do you mean?"

"My pa. He needs me to start working. I'm old enough now, so... that's what I'm gonna do."

Oliver bit his lip. "Is it because I got you in trouble? Is it because of the picture?"

Kyle stilled for a moment, then shook his head, a small smile playing at the corner of his mouth. Oliver's heart took notice and beat a little faster.

"No, 'course not, Ollie." Kyle rubbed his thumb over his swollen knuckles. "Y'know, I'm sick of the teacher tying my hand behind my back. It's not my fault I'm wrong-handed."

"Wrong-handed?"

Kyle lifted up his left hand and waved it a little bit. "Plus, y'know. I'm not really meant for things like schooling. I'm different from you, remember?" He looked down at his feet. "And being wrong-handed, that doesn't matter a whit when I'm working. No one here cares. They won't tie my hand behind my back, 'cause then how am I gonna get the work done, y'know?"

A strange sense of relief washed over Oliver. It wasn't his fault.

"Was kinda your fault though," Kyle said, as if reading his mind. Oliver stared at him, open-mouthed. Kyle smiled. "You distracted me with that nice drawing of what we're gonna be, and I forgot which hand to use."

Oliver smiled too, and he didn't know how to express his gratitude—to Kyle, to the universe, to whoever was responsible for the new lightness in his chest—so he stood there and shuffled his feet while Kyle returned to his old nemesis the feed bag. He tried once more to get a strong grip with his left hand, but it was too much; he hissed through his teeth and clenched his jaw.

Oliver didn't know what compelled him, but he took the two steps forward necessary to bring himself up to Kyle, then took the bag and returned it to the ground again. Kyle stared up at him with something like shame in his eyes. Oliver recognized it; he'd seen it in his own reflection the day before.

He gently grabbed hold of Kyle's hand, turned it, examined the purplish bruise spread over the knuckles. Kyle sucked in a breath and held it. Oliver closed his eyes and remembered, dreamlike, a day in the fields, crying, Kyle taking care of him, making him feel better, making his hurts go away.

Eyes still shut, he lifted up the hand, very quickly, and kissed it, as Kyle had done years before. Then he opened his eyes and dropped the hand, blushing, feeling very foolish. They weren't so young anymore as to heal each others' wounds in such a simple way. It's not what a man would do, he could hear his father say.

Red circles bloomed on Kyle's cheeks. He looked up, over Oliver's shoulder, then away, taking a few steps back.

Oliver wanted to say something, to apologize, when a voice stopped him, a deep whisper that he could have taken for sinister had it not been so familiar to him.

"_Mijo._ Come inside now. It is cold, and you will kill your mother if you come down ill. Be a good boy, now."

Her voice was like a lasso around his body; he couldn't _not_ follow. Though he would have tried, had Kyle asked him to. Or even looked at him. But he didn't. He returned to his work, hiding a wince, and walked slowly away.

So Oliver trailed Salma back to the house, through the dark parlor, the candlelit hall, and back to his mother's sitting room. Beautiful as ever, she sat straight-backed, perched on a padded bench, and moved her fingers swiftly around her needlepoint.

Salma placed a hand on his shoulder; it felt heavier than usual. "Wait here, child."

His mother looked up at Salma's approach and stopped her work. They spoke in hushed whispers. His mother's face remained blank, calm, pristine like the porcelain doll she always appeared to him as.

Deep in conversation, Salma looked back at him, her eyes dark and narrow, and said, "_Demasiado íntimo. No es natural._" He had no idea what that meant, but he saw his mother's eyes widen, just barely, and he felt the slightest tinge of fear.

"Oliver, dear," his mother said then, her voice very refined. "Come here."

He shuffled forward, his body trembling with nerves, though he wasn't exactly sure why.

"Oliver." She cupped his cheeks with her cool, smooth hands. "You are a good boy." He nodded. "And you are good at school." He nodded again. "You are going to be a great man." The barest movement of his head, up and down. She believed it. He didn't—not yet, anyway. Her hands stroked his cheek one last time, then released their soft hold. "And you are not to play with Kyle Lewis any longer."

Oliver blinked hard, swallowed, found his voice. "Why—why not, Ma?"

"Because he's not your schoolmate anymore. He's a stable boy; he's our worker now. That means he's very busy, and he can't play. I'm sorry, my little sweet Oliver. But Kyle can no longer be your friend. You must stay away from him from now on." She grabbed his hands and squeezed gently. "Can you do that? Can you be a good boy for your mother?"

He closed his eyes, saw Kyle, his reddened cheeks, saw him turn, saw him walk away from him.

"Yes," he whispered. "I can be good."

His mother leaned in and kissed him on the forehead.

"My sweet boy. My Oliver."

An image ghosted through his mind, soft and silvery, of the drawing. His arm slung over Kyle's shoulder, smiles stretched all the way across their faces. He'd drawn them as adults—as men. Not as boys. They still had time to make it true.

A long-forgotten vow tiptoed to the front of his mind... _I promise, before God—_

"Come, _mijo_," Salma whispered in his ear. "It is time for your supper."

He followed her out of the room, toward the kitchen. The sound of her skirts swished through the air like a snake gliding through long grass.

* * *

(...TBC...)


	3. Chapter 3: The Lesson

**Lay Me Down**

_**Chapter Three - The Lesson**_

**

* * *

Lakeside Ranch, Montana Territory. 1877.****  
****Kyle Lewis, age 14.

* * *

**

The Fish boy lingered just outside the stable-barn door. He hadn't dared poke his head in, but Kyle could see his feet, or the shadows of his feet, fidgeting to and fro. He heard the scrape of shorn fingernails against peeling paint, as if the boy couldn't control his twitching extremities at all.

It wasn't the first time he'd gone lurk-about, either. Ever since Hector had given Kyle full responsibility over the newly broken horses, Oliver Fish had popped back into the periphery of his small world, like a curious god peeking down at the little people through the clouds, content to watch, but not participate.

Kyle propped his small hand-axe up against a post and kicked the leftover wood shavings at his feet into a small pile. The whole barn smelled refreshingly of pine. He wiped his fingertips, gummy with oil and dust, on his pants, and eyed the foot-shadows as they performed their awkward dance outside the door.

Sighing, he took pity on the boy—once so open; now crippled by shyness—and called out to him.

"Get in here, already. You want to; just do it."

The nervous shuffling stopped, the shadows stilled.

Kyle waited. Impatiently.

He sighed.

"Oliver."

That worked. A familiar, yet oddly new face tilted slowly into the barn. Kyle had only seen him from a distance these last few years, as he was hustled off to school, or inside the house, or to his lessons. Always _away, away, away._

Finally up close, he noticed the changes, subtle, but clear. A little bit of fat lost in the cheeks. A little bit more fear in the wrinkled forehead. But, still, those clear blue eyes, so inviting, so seemingly friendly. That smile, once marked with goofy confidence, now with a trembling nervousness, nevertheless charming.

"Kyle. Hi." He lifted an awkward hand. "Hello." Behind him, the barn door creaked close on rusted hinges. They were left alone in a strange sort of half-light that seemed something out of a dreamworld. The sound of swishing horse tails was both familiar and hypnotic. How odd it felt to be with the boy again, like traveling backwards through time with a blink of the eyes.

Kyle tipped his hat. "Stranger." His voice had come out colder than he expected, but he didn't mind. It summed up his feelings pretty well.

"I know." Oliver lowered his head and shoved his hands in his pockets. He'd begun wearing full-length trousers now, not the silly little half-shorts Mrs. Fish used to dress him in, as if he were some sort of stringed marionette.

"What is it that you know, Oliver?"

"That it's..." He looked down, then quickly back up. "That it's been a while."

Kyle smirked. "It's been almost three years, bud. I might not go to school anymore or have fancy tutors come visit me at home, but I still remember how to count." He leaned down to retrieve his hand-axe. Oliver took a small step back.

Kyle was afraid for a moment that he'd gone too far. That Oliver would simply nod his head and walk out, leaving him alone. Again.

"Don't go," he said, though he wasn't sure why. Oliver hadn't moved beyond that one step.

"You sure?" Oliver bit his lip. "I mean, I know you don't want me around, that you're busy and all, but, well, I thought..."

"Wait? What?" Kyle set down the axe again. He was starting to feel like a marionette himself. "What're you talking about? I don't want you around? Where'd you get an idea like that? Is that why you stopped being my—" Kyle brought a fist to his mouth and bit his thumb nail. "Is that why you don't come around no more?"

"My ma said—"

"Your _ma_?" Kyle gaped at him. What did Mrs. Fish know about anything, anyway?

"I thought—I thought you knew..." Oliver shrugged his big, round shoulders.

Kyle laughed, but only because he wasn't quite sure what Oliver was going on about. It wasn't exactly what he'd call amusing. "How am I s'posed to know _any_ of this?" He flung his arms out at his sides in frustration. "_You_ stopped talking to me."

"I just—I thought, you know, there wasn't time any more for skipping stones and swimming and all that other silly kid stuff we used to do. Your pa needed you to start working. You said so yourself."

Kyle could feel his nostrils flaring. He didn't know how Oliver Fish could make him so mad sometimes. "So, no time for skipping stones means no time for me, huh? That's all you stuck around for? Some friend you were."

"Horse water!"

He could tell Oliver was angry now too. Not just the outburst, but the way his fists balled up and his shoulders bunched together, as if he were preparing for a fight. Kyle had never seen him this worked up before. The kid was usually so quiet, so well-behaved, so docile. Kyle stepped toward him.

"I _told_ you, Kyle! My ma said I had to stay away. Said you couldn't be my friend anymore. Said you didn't _want_ to be!"

Another step closer. "And you believe everything your ma tells you?"

"What?" Oliver scoffed. "You're saying you still wanna be my friend?"

Kyle was right up in his face now. "'Course I do, you damn fool! I miss you!"

A hush came over the space. It seemed to hang from the tall ceiling, settling into every shadowy corner, heavy and bloated like a spider's belly full of eggs. Even the horses had stopped snuffling and panting.

Oliver's eyes were wide blue pools, big as the Montana sky. Kyle hadn't meant to blurt it out like that. He didn't even know he felt that way at all. But, he was never one to hide anything, so he wouldn't back down from it, no matter what Oliver thought.

A deep breath through the nose, and then Oliver let out a very quiet, "Oh." Followed by an even quieter, "You said damn." A hand flew up to cover his mouth, as the realization struck that he, too, had blasphemed.

Kyle couldn't help but chuckle at his distress. The laughter built until it rocked his chest and soon he was struggling for breath. Oliver glared at him, but that only made him laugh harder. It was like being glared at by a baby chick. He'd forgotten how darned adorable the boy could be when he was miffed.

"What're you laughing at?" Oliver pouted. Kyle wanted to pinch his puffy cheeks. He held back, though, because they weren't kids anymore; and he was still mad at him, even disarmed as he was by Oliver's goofy, unintentional charms.

"You," Kyle replied. "Us. Hollering in the barn over some nonsense from years back." He gestured to his forgotten project. "I got troughs need mending, y'know."

Oliver sucked in his bottom lip and nodded, his eyes on his shoes. "I didn't know..." He looked up in the dim light of the barn, and Kyle didn't know if it was possible for a person to look more rueful. "I didn't know that you didn't know."

Kyle grinned. He saw, almost as if from a dream, his hand reach out and give Oliver a gentle pat on the shoulder.

"And yet... here you are." Kyle blinked up at him. "Has the stable-boy ban been lifted?"

"Um, well..." Oliver squinted his eyes and puffed out his cheeks. His shoulders bunched up so high it looked like his neck had been swallowed up. His feet kicked up little bits of shorn wood, releasing a fresh waft of clean pine smell. "Not exactly. Not—not specifically. But my father..." he drifted off.

"Your father what?"

Oliver squared his shoulders, releasing his neck from their stranglehold. "He says a man makes his own decisions. He's got to grab the bull's horns and get things done on his own, or else he isn't worth the black on his shoes."

Kyle smiled. "So what are these important manly things you need to 'get done,' Oliver old boy?"

Oliver's chest puffed out. He looked very pleased with himself all of a sudden. "A man's got to learn how to ride."

Eyebrows inching up, Kyle regarded Oliver dubiously. Though, he wasn't surprised the boy hadn't yet learned to ride. If Mrs. Fish had her way, he would never have left the cradle.

"So," Kyle said, "you came here to teach yourself how to ride?"

"Yep." There was something in the way he spoke it, just that one simple little word, but Kyle could feel the thrill in Oliver, the secret joy one gets from doing something he's not supposed to do.

"Well..." Kyle walked around behind him and hefted a small saddle off the wall-hook. Oliver swiveled on a heel to face him. "If that ain't the stupidest thing I've ever heard, Oliver Fish."

"Wh—what?"

"You'll get yourself killed, is what!" He shifted with the saddle, enjoying the feel of the worn leather against his skin, even if the half-rotted smell of it still made him a little queasy, despite years of exposure.

Oliver reached for the saddle. "I'll be fine."

Kyle kept it at a distance. "No. You'll need riding lessons."

"Mm hmm," Oliver said, reaching again for the saddle. His eyes had gone dark and greedy, focusing solely on the object of their desire.

"Lessons from me."

Oliver looked at him then and smiled, a very indulgent smile. Patronizing, as if he'd enjoyed watching Kyle take the long way round to get to the point. Or maybe it was simple satisfaction, as if he'd just gotten exactly what he'd wanted from the start.

When he reached for the saddle again, Kyle let him take it.

"Like I said. I'll be fine." He padded off toward the stalls, inspecting each horse as if he knew what to look for, which horse would suit him best. He didn't know it would be the small gray one at the end. That one was kinder than the rest, had more patience with an inelegant rider. She was Kyle's favorite; riding hadn't come easy to him at first, but Jinny was a forgiving old beast.

"You'll be fine?" Kyle asked Oliver's back.

Oliver turned. "I've got a good teacher now." He lowered his head, probably to hide the blush Kyle could see racing along his cheeks. "And a friend."

Well, damn. If the kid was gonna go all soft on him, he'd have no choice but to consent to his every wish.

Oliver stopped in front of Jinny's stall, considered her, nodded with some sense of purpose, then swiveled on his toe and pointed toward the large brown stallion across the way.

"This one'll do," he said with a winsome attempt at authority.

"It'll do if you like getting thrown on your ass." Kyle followed him down the rows and took the saddle back from him. "That one hasn't been gelded yet. Turn back around, sunshine, and say hello to Jinny."

"But she's so... small."

Kyle eyed him up and down. "So are you."

Oliver made a face at that. Kyle couldn't remember if it was always so easy and fun between them. He hoped it hadn't been, because then he would've ended up missing the years spent apart even more.

He propped open the back door of the stable-barn, then ushered Jinny out of her stall.

"Come here and let her get a good sniff on you. But no quick moves, okay? I doubt your pa wants your insides all bruised up as part of your manhood training."

That seemed to put a pause in Oliver. He didn't say much, but followed Kyle's orders with a keen sense of purpose and understanding. He was a good student.

Kyle suited Jinny up, showing Oliver where to place the saddle, how to insert the bit, then he helped hoist Oliver onto Jinny's back. He was unsteady at first, wiggling his torso forward and back until he found his balance. Jinny moved with him, compensating for his erratic movements in that beautifully tolerant way of hers. Kyle adjusted the stirrups, allowing for Oliver's longer legs. When Oliver was finally settled, Kyle gently grabbed hold of Jinny's mane and heaved himself up, seating himself directly behind Oliver.

"I can do it on my own," Oliver said.

"I know," Kyle replied softly. "But I don't want you to. Not just yet. Let me get you out in the open first, okay?" He placed his hands over Oliver's on the reins. "Grab them light. Don't tug or pull on it. She'll wanna stop."

"Okay."

"Now, squeeze her sides a bit—" Releasing one hand, Kyle reached down and pressed on Oliver's thigh, just enough to send them into a slow trot. "Not too much though. Slow is good. We want slow." He kept his hand there until he was sure Oliver had the hang of it, then he returned it to the reins.

He kept a close eye on Oliver's grip, making sure it didn't get too strong. His pa would have called hands like those _pugilist's hands_, back when Pa had more to say than "Get to work," and "Bring me the whiskey." They were hands meant for brute force, strong and solid and useful. Not like Kyle's thin little counterparts.

Kyle guided them away from the barn, out of sight from the main house and the workers' quarters. The ban was still in effect; he didn't want to get Oliver into any trouble. Once they were a good distance away, he slowed them to a gentle stop and dismounted, leaving Oliver alone atop the horse. Nothing surrounded them but yellow grass and a strong wind, bringing with it the sweet smells of the mountains—sage brush and bitterroot flowers. The bitterroots bloomed year-long, it seemed, despite the dry season. Kyle could see Oliver swallow, his throat moving up and down with nerves.

"You're doing great," he said, even though Oliver hadn't moved yet.

Oliver nodded. His face had gone very pale. He squeezed his legs against Jinny's side, and then he was off, a quicker than any of them had anticipated—including Jinny, who let out a little whooping neigh, as if in celebration.

_"Kyyyyyyyle!"_

Kyle chased after them, laughing. It was hardly more than a light trot, but the squeak in Oliver's voice was too funny.

"Let go of her sides!" he called out. Oliver, in his alarm, had gone tight, clinging to Jinny when he needed to release her. "Relax!"

"Relax?" Oliver was leaning forward now, probably to stop himself from tipping over. "How?"

Kyle caught up and placed a hand on Jinny's neck as he skipped sideways along side them, then tugged softly on one rein. Jinny slowed. Oliver stayed down, his breath choppy and loud. Kyle could see that both his eyes were squeezed shut.

"You did good," Kyle said, trying not to laugh.

"Shut up." Oliver opened one eye. "And don't laugh at me."

"I won't." Kyle reached out a hand and helped him dismount. "I promise."

And with those two words, he felt the last three years slip away. He was a kid again, he had a best friend and a partner in crime and someone to share his heart's dreams with. Except, he didn't even know if they'd really been like that when they were kids. Had his heart even had any dreams, besides when he'd fill his belly next or see Oliver smile at him again?

Oliver was smiling at him now, and nothing else mattered. But the smile slowly faded, and so too did the sunshine.

"I've been away too long," Oliver said. "They'll miss me back home."

Kyle nodded. It was getting late, and he still had that trough to fix. "I'll take you back. Get on." He patted the saddle with little force and watched as Oliver mounted the horse, completely on his own this time. He scooted back to allow Kyle room in front.

Kyle maneuvered Jinny toward the ranch and then they sped off, faster than before, faster than Oliver expected, because his arms gripped Kyle around the middle in such a tight hold, Kyle thought he might show signs of it tomorrow.

He made a wide berth of the main house and deposited Oliver near a stand of withered, gnarled trees.

"See you around," he said, tipping his hat. When Oliver was merely a speck in the distance, he added, "I hope."

It was after sunset when he finally retreated back to the two room quarters he shared with his pa. It was dark, no lamps or candles lit, but he could still see his father's figure, as always, slumped in his chair.

"Evening, Pa," he said, just like every night. "I'm going to sleep now."

"I miss her so much," his father mumbled. He was drunk again. Kyle didn't need to smell it on him, or hear it in his slurred words. He only ever talked about 'her' when he was drunk.

"Me too," Kyle said quietly. "I miss her too." He doubted his father heard him. He wasn't really talking to Kyle, anyway. He was probably talking to God.

"Took her away. The love of my life. Had to—" A desperate sob. "Had to go and get sick, and—and leave me. Breaking my heart all over, Jin. Breaking it... Tiny bits." He lifted up an empty hand, as if presenting the phantom pieces. His glassy, red-rimmed eyes stared past Kyle. Moonlight streamed in through the window, alighting his face, making the tear tracks glow on his pale, unshaven skin.

Kyle touched the empty, cold hand, brought it back down to his father's lap. Turning, he pulled a blanket off the edge of the mattress and draped it over his father's slouched form. "It's okay," he said, tucking the frayed edges of the blanket around bony shoulders. It wasn't okay. Not really. But it always seemed like the thing to say. "It's okay."

He walked slowly out of the room, leaving his pa to his blubberings. He used to feel more sorry for him, for them both, for being left all alone with nothing but dark rooms and silence. But that was when he believed in love. Believed in the power of its goodness. But love never did a person any good but bring them a heaping plate of misery. It was like a terrible infliction, surviving in the heart too long after hope died.

And love without hope was little more than pain.

In his small room, he struck the last red phosphorous match in the box and lit the small wax candle on the table next to his bed. His heart beat a little easier with the addition of light in the room.

Not that he was scared of the dark. It was just, well, he had to be vigilant. Cattle rustlers were always about, and he didn't need any trouble with lost stock. He often thought of speaking with Mr. George Fish about getting a fence set up around the property, with wire and everything. It would eat up most of his free time, and probably take months, maybe years, to finish, but it would be worth it if discouraged them no-good Ford boys from coming in and stealing cattle and doing God only knew to the land he worked so hard to foster.

A chilly breeze snaked in through the window, sending a shiver up his arms. The heavy shutters had split, some years earlier, warped and degraded by bad weather, and wouldn't close up all the way. He'd been meaning to fix them, but there just hadn't been time for it. Sighing, he tugged the thin sheet off his bed and carried it, along with his small wooden chair, to the half-open window. He mounted the chair and stretched up full, on the tips of his toes, and extended the blanket all the way across the top of the thin frame. He pulled down until it caught in the crack between the frame and the wall, kept pulling until it settled in snugly. He tucked in the edges all the way around, as best he could. The cold still crawled in, but it was a very slow crawl, and he was able to keep himself warm by the flame of the candle.

He sat on his wool-stuffed mattress, his back up against the west-facing wall—still slightly warm from the afternoon sun—and let his eyes fall shut.

Until a sound outside snapped them open. Someone had creaked open the broken shutter. He couldn't see their silhouette through the sheet, but he could hear them, the sound of boots on gravel, a finger poking fabric. The Fords had never come this far in before. His heart thumped in his chest. He was almost afraid they'd hear it pounding all the way outside. Slowly, he crawled off the mattress, then, on his hands and knees, shoved one fist underneath, pulling out cold metal. The pistol was heavy in his hand. It gleamed in the flickering candlelight.

Silent as a fox in the hen house, he tiptoed to the window. Shaking fingers reached for the sheet. He breathed deep, held it in, steadying his heart and his nerve, then ripped down the sheet and aimed the gun at the intruder in one swift move.

"I swear I'll shoot," he whispered, as fierce as his trembling voice would allow.

"Kyle!" the intruder squeaked in a familiar voice.

Kyle let out his held breath. His whole body was shaking now, taken over by nerves and relief and a flood of adrenaline.

"Jumping Jehosephat, Oliver! I could have killed you!"

"Why do you have a gun?"

"Why are you skulking around outside my window?" Kyle lowered the pistol and placed it on the chair.

"Can I—can I come in?" Oliver's eyes glimmered in the dark like great pools of water.

Kyle poked his head out the window and looked nervously around. Emptiness and darkness, for miles and miles. Not a single lamp shone from the main house, off in the distance.

He waved Oliver in. "Just... keep your voice down. The walls are thin and Pa doesn't like being disturbed from his, uh, his peaceful slumber."

Oliver clambered through the window, graceful as a charging bull. Straightening himself up, he shoved his hands in his pockets and looked around the room, taking in the bare surroundings while Kyle re-covered the window.

"It's so dark in here."

"That's because it's nighttime," Kyle deadpanned.

"Good thing I brought these, then." Oliver's hands came out of his pockets, gripping two squat candles, one in each palm. The wicks looked too short to pull flame from Kyle's half-melted stub.

"I don't have any more matches."

Oliver smiled. "Good thing I brought these too." He pulled out a matchbox and set it on the table, next to the candles.

Kyle stood behind Oliver and watched him light up the small room. It felt so strange. He couldn't remember another person ever stepping foot in there. He wasn't sure the space felt right for more than one.

"Not that I'm making a fuss," he said as Oliver turned back toward him. "Just curious is all... but what are you doing here, sneaking around in the dead of night?"

Oliver took a deep breath and rubbed his hands together. "I owe you."

"You what now?"

"I'm... in your debt."

"Oliver, come on. What are you on about?"

"You taught me." Oliver shrugged. "And now, I have to teach you." He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Kyle squinted at him. "Teach me... what?"

"You remember how to read?" He had produced a thin, leather-bound book, seemingly out of nowhere.

Kyle opened his mouth, but nothing came out. How to answer such a question? He closed his mouth, swallowed, then tried again. "Yes... I mean... a little." He turned away from Oliver. "I don't wanna read anything."

Oliver tugged on his shirtsleeve and turned him back around. "It's good. You'll like it!" He had that look again. That secret-thrill look.

"You don't know that."

"It's an adventure story. It's not dry like what we used to read at school. I promise."

Kyle couldn't help but perk up at that. He wondered if Oliver had done it on purpose, to win the argument. Invoked a promise. Kyle didn't know why he put such stock in them, but he did. There was something sacred about a promise. It meant more than anything else in the entire world. People lied, and cheated, and stole, but when they made a promise, they meant it. He believed that, even against his better judgment.

"An adventure story?"

"Yeah. It's about these men—outlaws, really—living in the forest. They ride horses and have sword fights and save people from certain death!"

Kyle chewed on his lip. "Outlaws? That doesn't seem your type of story."

"But I thought, maybe—maybe it's yours."

"You think so?"

"Not—not that I think you would ever—I mean—I'm not trying to say—" His face had gone brick red and Kyle thought maybe he forgot how to breathe. He reached out a hand, rested it on Oliver's tense shoulder.

"Calm down, Ollie." He paused. He hadn't called him that in years. It just fell off the tongue, all slippery-like. "I know what you mean. Adventures stories are good. I like them."

Oliver swallowed, looked down. "You—you do?"

"Yeah. Sounds nice. Here..." He sat down on the mattress, scooted to the edge to make room for Oliver, and patted the empty space next to him. "I'm ready for my lesson."

"Okay." The mattress sank a bit under Oliver's weight. They sat together, backs against the wall, knees propped up, shoulders just barely touching.

Kyle turned his head. "I'm a little tired, though. Can you—can you just read it to me, to start off? I'll be better tomorrow night." He yawned. "I swear."

"Tomorrow night?" Oliver raised an eyebrow.

"Mm hmm," Kyle said. "When you come back for my next lesson."

Oliver grinned—a small, triumphant grin. "Yeah, all right. Tomorrow."

"Good."

Holding the book between them, Oliver flipped it open and began reading in a soft, pleasant voice. He used his finger to follow along the words at first, maybe hoping to jog Kyle's memory, but his hand fell away after a while and rested on his bent knee instead.

Kyle found himself staring at Oliver's hands again. Those big pugilist's hands. He imagined his own hand sliding over the back of one, fingers slotting perfectly between the ridges of his knuckles. The room felt comfortably warm for once; maybe it was the extra candles. He closed his eyes, swallowing, and allowed himself to imagine it was Oliver bringing him all that warmth.

It felt incredibly good—not being alone. Having his best friend back in his life.

And like the stubborn bitterroot blossom defying a long drought, hope bloomed in his chest.

* * *

(...TBC...)


	4. Chapter 4: This Land Is Your Land

**Lay Me Down**

_**Chapter Four - This Land Is Your Land**_

**

* * *

Lakeside Ranch, Montana Territory. 1878.****  
****Oliver Fish, age 15.

* * *

**

"Where are you going?"

Oliver had one step out the front door, a book tucked under his arm, when his mother's voice stopped him.

"Just for a walk." He adjusted his hat over his head. "It's such a lovely day out, I thought it would be nice to do some reading out of doors."

"Oh?" Her eyes narrowed in on the book.

Oliver nodded, turning his gaze away from her. "Mm hmm."

"Oliver?"

"Yes?" He turned back, reluctantly.

"Please... return before supper."

He smiled. "I will."

"And be safe."

"I will." She looked anxious, so he grabbed her small, gloved hand and gave it a squeeze. "It's just a walk, Ma. I'll be fine." Leaning in, he laid a kiss on her soft, warm cheek. "You don't have to worry about me so much, you know."

"I do. And I will. For as long as I live." She placed lace-covered palms on his face, very gently, as if she were afraid he would break. It was a gesture that used to bring him comfort; now, it only made him feel small. He reached up and removed the hands.

"Okay," he said, because he felt he had to say _something_.

She smiled, a sad smile, then turned back inside, her shoulders sloping at a deeper angle than usual. Salma met her in the hall. They exchanged quiet words. Salma's eyes darted up to him, then quickly back down. He noticed again how gray and heavy she'd gotten; it had been such a gradual change as to sneak up on him sometimes. He thought, too, there was an air of bad spirits about her now that hadn't been there before. Every glance was suspicious, every word hissed out like a threat. He'd looked up the word _bruja_—and he hated to admit how fitting it seemed now. A woman he had once loved like a mother, now somehow a peril to his happiness. It wasn't right. He didn't know what he could do to fix it. To make things like they were before. Sometimes he didn't even know if he wanted to. Everything was all confused in his head.

To be a man, he had to forge his own way. To be loved, he had to do what he was told. He couldn't seem to find a way to make the two fit together.

With a heavy sigh, he wandered out of the house. After a few yards, he heard footsteps behind him. He turned. Salma, some paces back, a wooden bucket in her hands. She kept her eyes down and ambled over to the water pump. Oliver kept going, looking back every few feet to keep an eye on her. On the third turn he caught her watching him like a red-tailed hawk watched the prairie dog.

It set a sudden coldness in his heart.

He pivoted, with as much nonchalance as he could muster, and turned back toward her, walked past her, circling around the south end of the main house, out of sight. It made his trek longer, but it was worth it to keep her off his trail. To keep her from reporting back to his mother with his every wrong move.

As he made his third left, a sliver of guilt passed through him. He didn't like lying.

But—he wasn't _really_ lying. He _was_ going for a walk. He _was_ going to read. He just omitted the part in the middle where the walk led him to the field, the field led him to the stables, the stables led him to...

"Kyle," he said, exhaling it on a breath. He closed the barn door behind him quietly.

Kyle looked up from his work, and his whole face smiled. Every inch of it. Oliver was transfixed by it.

"You ready to go?"

Oliver nodded eagerly and jogged for a saddle.

They had planned this day special. Neither had much leeway when it came to time to use at their choosing. Their lives were stuffed full with responsibility. Sneaking away at night for reading lessons or for short periods of the day to watch Kyle work with the horses was all Oliver could offer to the reforged friendship. Until Kyle proposed this getaway.

It had been a bit of work, rearranging his tutor schedule without raising any suspicions. He knew it had been harder for Kyle. With all the duties he was expected to perform around the ranch, and hardly a hand of help. Oliver had proposed, one day, to split Kyle's workload among the two of them. Kyle simply smirked and cracked a joke about Oliver's 'delicate hands' before uniformly refusing his offer.

That didn't stop him from offering the next day, or the next. It had become the natural way to begin many of their conversations.

"Can I—?"

"Nope."

Or, "Let me just—"

"I got it, Oliver."

And then they moved on, smiling at the easy comfort of it all. At being in each other's company, even in disagreement.

Kyle ushered two horses out of their stalls: the little gray one he called Jinny, and the large brown one, which didn't seem to have a name. Oliver stepped toward the brown.

"Try again," Kyle said.

"But you love Jinny!" Oliver whined.

"I also love my own precious life." Kyle adjusted his saddle over the sturdy back of the big male. "And if you ended up with a broken skull under my watch, I'm sure as eggs is eggs your parents'd hang me for it."

Oliver scowled at him, but it was all for show, really. He kind of liked that Kyle looked after him, even if he didn't need looking after.

"Plus," Kyle said with a wicked grin, "this way I can keep my two favorites in my sights at all times."

A hot blush seized Oliver's cheeks. He lowered his hat in a futile attempt to hide it. Kyle stepped over and bumped a playful fist against his shoulder.

"Aww, widdle Ollie. You're so cute when you go all red-like."

"Shut up." He pushed Kyle away, with little real force. Kyle shot him that wicked grin again. It made Oliver's heart pump a little faster in his chest. "We should—" He cleared his throat, tried again. "We should go."

Kyle adjusted his own hat tighter over his head, then mounted his horse. Soon enough they were on the open range. Kyle was something of a noisy rider, always yelling something, even just an unintelligible grunt, but the horses seemed to understand, even if Oliver didn't.

They gradually increased their speed. Oliver loved the feel of gusting air rippling through his shirts, the exhilaration of it hitting his face and sending a shiver along his cheeks. They rode and rode, accompanied by a symphony of noises: hooves springing off hard ground, deep breaths, whistling wind, Kyle's whoops of joy. Up ahead, the mountains grew ever closer.

And then they saw it.

Oliver never failed to marvel at the impossible beauty of the geography. How the green-gray waves of the prairie gave way to the dark-forest lushness of the mountains. And stretching between them, glimmering like blue diamonds under the sun, lay the lake. Its gentle waters lapped against a rocky shoreline along the mountainside. A softer shore of silt and pebbles curved along the western rim, crowned by a tufting of short buckthorn trees—their leaves glossy and green, peppered with the late-spring bloom of yellow flowers—growing in the shade of a small pine forest. Along the eastern shore, long, pale grasses sprouted all the way down to the water's edge, though thick trails were crushed flat into swirling beds under the hooves of thirsty foragers.

They rode west, then circled around the expansive lake on a northward bearing, up the sloping land toward the mountains. Horseshoes clopped over hard rock as they turned once more and made their way inward through a winding copse of shrubby, fragrant trees. Pine needs gave way to papery leaves, which in turn gave way to an open blue sky. They were in a small clearing; the lake sparkled in front of them, its far-most edge butting up against a tiered and dewy rock wall.

Cutting through the cracks of the mountain, a waterfall cascaded down craggy, mossy cliffs. A constant white mist danced atop the surface of the wide, deep pool at its base.

Kyle dismounted in front of him, leading his horse toward a shaded area of trees and soft land. Oliver meant to follow, but he was frozen by the sight of the place. He'd been here many times before, as a child, but he had somehow taken its beauty for granted. Now he could appreciate it better.

Now he could see it for what it really was: Paradise.

Atop his horse, he breathed in deep, and felt his body come alive with the vibrant, overflowing spirit of the land. It was easy to imagine he and Kyle had been granted entry to the garden of life.

He doubted even Victor Lord's heirs had any tract of land to rival its beauty.

Shaking his head, he refocused, dismounted, and went about making Jinny as comfortable—but secure—as possible. Kyle's horse was already settled, its nose at the water's edge and a bag of oats within easy reach. Kyle himself stood bootless on the rocks overlooking the pool. Then he started undressing, pulling at the buttons on his neck as if they had caused him great offense.

Oliver kept his focus strictly on tying Jinny's reins in a knot around a tree branch. He gaze certainly didn't drift to Kyle... to bare marble shoulders... to the soft slope of his unclothed back... to his hair, sticking up in all directions after he tossed his hat to the side... to the indentation of his hips as he quickly dragged off his duckins and long johns...

No. Oliver was certain he had focused—double-focused, really—on the important task of tying his horse to the tree. He tested the knot as Kyle dove head-first into the lake. Which Oliver barely registered, of course. Because he had important knot-tying to attend to.

He found a patch of comfortable ground to make his seat, rolled up his shirtsleeves, and opened his book.

Only to have a bit of water splash against his hands and arms.

"Cut that out," he said, not bothering to look up.

His only response was another splash, larger than the last. He sighed and lowered his book. "What?"

Kyle poked his head out of the water. "Come swim with me."

"I'm reading."

"You can do that later. Come swim with me."

Oliver rolled his eyes and brought his book back up, effectively blocking Kyle out. Kyle splished away with a loud _"Urmph!"_ of displeasure. Oliver felt bad. It was supposed to be a day spent together, away from their responsibilities, and he was hiding behind his studies. Guilt gripped his heart; but it released its hold when another splash hit him square in the face.

"Eek!" he yelled. Or maybe growled. In any case, it was _definitely_ not a squeal. Which didn't explain why Kyle thought it was the funniest thing in the entire world.

Oliver sighed. He couldn't possibly stay mad at that face. Not when it lit up brighter than he'd ever seen before. Kyle didn't laugh a lot, and when he did, it was always... held back. Like he wouldn't allow himself to really feel it. But not now. Now he was smiling and spitting up water and practically twirling with glee. Oliver had never seem him so... childlike. Even when he'd been a child.

So he stuck his tongue out and scooted further away from the water's edge. It was a dare. Try it again, Kyle, and see what happens. But Kyle didn't take the bait. Instead, he dipped under the water, his cheeks full of sucked-in air.

Slightly disappointed, Oliver shrugged his shoulders and returned his attention to his book. He pulled a pencil out of his pack to mark an important passage in the text. It was only a few minutes later that he noticed he hadn't marked the passage at all, but had drawn in the empty space under the chapter-ending text. There was the lake, the waterfall, the horses. The lone figure standing on the rocks. Nude.

He quickly flipped the page.

That's when he realized something was wrong.

A strange sound. Or—the lack of sound. No splishes. No splashes. He looked out into the small pool. No Kyle. Had he swum beyond the rock reef, into the main body of the lake? Oliver shaded his eyes, squinting into the distance, but he couldn't see any sign of him. Returning his gaze to the waterfall, something caught his eye.

In the calm center of the pool, a bubble of air rose to the surface and popped.

A sudden fear surged through him, stronger than any feeling he'd ever felt in his life. He thought his heart might explode in his chest. He was frozen by it. He couldn't move, couldn't breathe. He could only think the same thought, over and over again: Kyle. Kyle under the water, possibly struggling for air.

And then time snapped back into place and he hopped off the ground, tugged off his boots, and dove into the water, fully-clothed.

Before he hit the water, Kyle's head emerged. Oliver had just enough time to register the confusion in Kyle's eyes before he painfully splatted against the surface. His entire body stung at the impact, but he pushed it aside, scrambled over to Kyle, grabbed his face and brushed droplets of water off of his skin.

"Oliver?"

"Are you okay?" he panted out.

Kyle plucked at his soaked shirt. "What's going on?" He swung his head toward the shade trees. "Is it hornets? Fire ants?"

Oliver kept stroking his face. "I thought you were drowning!"

Kyle laughed. "What?"

"Drowning!" Oliver didn't understand why Kyle didn't understand. Hadn't he been under the water, fighting for his life, just moments before?

Kyle shook his head, staring up at him with inquisitive eyes. "I was just trying to see if I could touch the bottom."

"Oh," Oliver breathed out. He realized Kyle's hand was clutching at his wet cotton shoulder. He stared down at it. That's when he noticed that his own arm—the one not keeping him afloat—had curled around Kyle's back, holding him close. His skin felt warm and soft. "Oh," he said again, releasing Kyle, who tilted his head as if studying him. Oliver felt ridiculous all over, treading water in his clothes, diving into pools to save people who didn't need saving.

Kyle's smile was gentle, though, and it helped soothe away his discomfort.

"I didn't know you were paying such close attention, Oliver. I thought you were ignoring me." He mock-pouted, but it turned into throaty laughter when Oliver revenged himself and splashed water right in Kyle's face.

"I was _trying_ to have a pleasant read in the shade. Dry was the preferable condition for it."

"Well, now you're all wet."

"Oh really? I hadn't noticed, Kyle."

Kyle rolled his eyes at him, chuckling, then swam a little ways off.

"Hey, Kyle," Oliver called out to him.

Kyle turned. "Yeah?"

"Warn me the next time you're about to do something reckless or dangerous, okay?"

An exasperated smile played over Kyle's lips. "Okay."

"Or stupid!"

"Okay!" He was grinning like a fool now, though Oliver didn't know why. "Now, get them wet clothes off and swim with me already!"

Oliver looked down at his drenched clothing. The way he figured, he had three options: sit in damp clothes, chafing and uncomfortable, while he read; let his clothes dry while he sat and waited, naked; or let his clothes dry while he swam a while with Kyle.

There was no choosing. It was so simple.

He pulled himself out of the water and, with his back to the pool, peeled off his sodden shirt. "Don't look," he called out before stripping off his britches. He didn't turn around. He didn't want to know if Kyle was looking or not. Either way it was embarrassing.

He laid his clothes out flat on a hot rock where they could sun-dry, then lowered himself slowly into the water. His stinging skin wouldn't let him make the mistake of diving in again. Finally submerged, he turned and spotted Kyle, paddling toward the waterfall. Oliver followed him over.

"There's a cave behind there," Kyle said. His eyebrows seemed to raise in a challenge.

Oliver swallowed. "You wanna...?"

Kyle grinned at him. "It's not so hard to get to. Don't even have to go under. Just through." Kyle demonstrated, waving an arm through the falling sheet of water to the empty space behind. "Come on!" he chirped, and then he disappeared into the mist, the water closing in behind him like a curtain. Oliver was more cautious. He poked a finger through. Finding no resistance, he sent in an exploratory arm. Then a shoulder. Finally, he sucked in a deep breath, closed his eyes, and pushed in.

He opened his eyes to a dark, high cavern, its walls shimmering with dampness.

"Pretty, isn't it?" Kyle asked, his voice echoing slightly.

Oliver gulped, then nodded. "Yes. It is." Sunlight reflected through the waterfall and cast the space in a greenish, phosphorescent glow. The backside of the waterfall glittered like falling diamonds. Oliver watched Kyle's face as he stared at it with wide-eyed wonder. He couldn't remember the last time Kyle looked so unwearied, so guileless, so free from worry and sorrow. It made him feel a little lightheaded. A little dizzy.

They really were in the garden of life, reborn as innocents. Eternal youth in the folds of paradise.

In the water, Kyle hooked a finger around Oliver's.

Oliver didn't pull away. The thought didn't even cross his mind.

* * *

They lay in the shade after emerging from the lake, Kyle clad in his duckins, Oliver in nearly-dry trousers.

Oliver's eyelids felt heavy, his head fuzzy and dull, and he drifted in and out of a peaceful sleep, the melody of birdsong and lapping water a chorus to dream by. He woke again when he felt movement beside him, and he watched with drowsy eyes as Kyle hopped over hot stones and disappeared behind the trees.

A few minutes later, he heard Kyle padding back toward him. He kept his eyes closed, concentrating on the sounds of birds, the rustle of leaves, the hypnotic splash of water against rock. It was the recipe for perfect repose. Until Kyle started slurping noisily on... something.

"Must you always be so... vulgar?" Oliver asked, grinning despite himself, his eyes still closed. Kyle only grunted at him in response, munching down louder.

Then something plush and fuzzy danced along Oliver's lips. He angled his neck up and watched with pleasure as Kyle bounced a fat, red raspberry on his mouth. Smiling, he parted his lips, and Kyle pushed the fruit in with one finger. Its juices were bright and tangy and it made him feel young. Young and carefree and alive. Kyle reached over with another raspberry, and Oliver gladly popped his mouth open to be fed again.

He rested a hand behind his head and stared up at the sky through the trees, his other hand next to him on the ground, fingers splayed. Kyle lay on his bare stomach contemplating the dirt. After a few minutes, he turned on his side and faced Oliver. He began hopping his fingers through the empty spaces between Oliver's, as if the ground were an instrument and Oliver's fingers the note-demarcations. He had a faraway look on his face, as if he weren't really there, as if he were thinking about something else, as if he didn't even realize what he was doing in the here-and-now. It made Oliver smile. A warm feeling flowed through him. When Kyle finally came back to reality and noticed Oliver smiling at him, he smiled back, his eyes dancing with mischief.

With that impish grin and slim, contoured chest, he looked to Oliver like some sort of faerie prince, come alive from the pages of a storybook.

"What?" Oliver asked.

Kyle squinched up his face. "The ground's all hard right here."

"Then move."

Kyle rolled over, sat up, and investigated his surroundings. Then he swiveled around, his back to Oliver, and lowered his head onto Oliver's bare stomach, using it as a cushion.

"Ah. That's better."

His hair was still damp and a little cold; it sent a shiver through Oliver's skin. But he found he didn't mind so much.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Relaxing."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah," Kyle said. "You're all soft and squishy and comfy."

Oliver tried to be offended. He truly did. But it was impossible. Not where they were. Not in their little oasis.

He closed his eyes, content to nap some more, when Kyle's voice brought him back.

"You ever think about the future?"

Oliver opened an eye. "Pretty much all the time."

He expected Kyle to say more, but he didn't.

"What about you?"

"Oh, you know," Kyle said. "Sure. But there isn't really a point to it. Not for me, anyway." His voice had gone low and hoarse, as if there were dirt in his throat. "I mean, I'm gonna be doing ten years from now what I'm doing now, and ten years after that, too."

Oliver bit his lip. Then he smiled. "Using my belly as a pillow? Twenty long years from now? That's a bold prediction, Kyle."

That earned him a laugh.

"What would you do," Kyle said softly, "if you could? If there was nothing stopping you?"

"You mean instead of ranching?"

"Yeah. Instead of ranching."

Oliver sucked on his lower lip and imagined his future self, as he often did. He allowed himself a moment to strip away the constraints. The expectations. The realities of his world.

"More than anything?" He sucked in a deep breath. "I wanted to be a lawman, you know. Like—like a sheriff. Or a marshall. Protect people." Be strong.

"I remember," Kyle said. "You never would let me be sheriff. Not that it mattered to me, a'course."

Oliver swallowed. "I don't know if you know this, but my pa was a Texas Ranger. Until the yanks came in and took over, that is. That's when he moved up here. There was a cattle drive, and he volunteered, and I guess it stuck. He even learned to like the Mexicans. He bought land, married my ma, and the rest... the rest you know."

Kyle angled his head up to look at him. "You should do it."

"Do what?"

"Be what you want."

Oliver thought about disputing it. He decided to divert instead.

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

"What would you do, if you could?"

Kyle stared down, picking at a fallen leaf on the ground. "There's no point in saying."

Oliver laughed. "You made _me_."

There was a pause. And then, "You remember when Jinny took up ill?"

Oliver squinted. He couldn't recall...

"The horse," Kyle said, as if Oliver needed clarification. "Well, she wasn't doing so good, and Hector wanted to put her down. This was before he was blind as a bat and worked with the horses still. Anyway, Hector was all ready to shoot her dead. But your pa, he was soft on her. Who wouldn't be? He came in and said, 'No. Let's fix her up.' So he called in the farrier, and it took a while, a lot of cuts and salves and medicines, but that farrier did it. He fixed her up. Not good as new, but good as good."

"I had no idea." It must have been when he was away from all that. "So that's what you want to be? A farrier?" That seemed quite doable for someone in Kyle's situation.

Kyle pinched his lips together. "Maybe. I dunno. I wanna... I'd wanna help people, too, y'know? Sick people?"

"A physician?"

"It has a fancy word, does it?" He chuckled. "Yeah. A physician. That'd be what I'd want." He paused. "If I could."

"Do you—?" Oliver started, then reconsidered his phrasing. "I mean, it's all right, though, yeah? Working the land?"

Kyle smiled. "Yeah. It's all right." He ran his fingers through the dirt absently. "I'm proud of it."

Oliver furrowed his brow in confusion. "But why? It's not your land." As soon as it was out of his mouth, he felt like a jerk. It had come out terribly wrong. It wasn't what he was trying to say. "I just mean—"

"No, it's okay," Kyle said, tilting his head back and giving him a small, reassuring smile. "I understand. It's just, well..." He bit his lip. "This sounds stupid."

"What?"

"It's not my land. But it's gonna be _your_ land. Someday. And I want it to be good land, the very best land." His voice went quiet. "For you..."

Oliver's mouth dropped open. He didn't know what to say to that. He felt that warm feeling again in his chest, that slight dizziness in his head, like there was suddenly too much _living_ in the world to do, too much for his body to handle at once.

So instead of saying anything, he brought his hand up and ruffled Kyle's hair. Kyle laughed, then sat up, scooting back and swiveling so that he sat parallel to Oliver, facing him, one knee tucked up to his chest. Oliver's hand fell away from his head. It brushed Kyle's hand on the way down. Completely on accident. He was sure.

Kyle rested his chin on his knee and stared at Oliver. It was an intense sort of stare. Not hard, but thorough, like he was looking deep inside Oliver, looking even into the depths of his soul. An air of peace rested on Kyle's shoulders, as if the simple practice of looking at Oliver brought him the serenest joy.

Oliver thought he should be embarrassed by such an inspection, but he wasn't. He felt... he felt like smiling. So he did.

He studied Kyle's face. His lips were stained red from the raspberries. Without thought, Oliver hooked a finger under Kyle's chin and raised his head. He ran his thumb lightly along Kyle's lower lip.

"Your mouth is all red."

Kyle bit down playfully on the thumb. "So is yours."

Oliver felt himself leaning in, compelled by some unnamed force. There was a mad thumping in his chest, like horses stomping all through his veins. But there was a lightness there, too, as if his heart could pop right out of his body and float away on feathery-white wings.

Behind Kyle, a bird landed on an empty tree limb. Something about that seemed... off...

Oliver pulled back suddenly.

His heart—just a few seconds earlier as light as a seed on the wind—dropped into the pits of his stomach.

"The horse," he croaked out.

"What?"

"Jinny."

Kyle's eyes went wide with fear. He turned his head in all directions, frantic. "What about her?"

Oliver's throat threatened to close entirely.

"She's—she's gone."

* * *

(...TBC...)


	5. Chapter 5: The Hunt

**Lay Me Down**

_**Chapter Five - The Hunt**_

**

* * *

Lakeside Ranch, Montana Territory. 1878.****  
****Kyle Lewis, age 15.

* * *

**

Kyle's heart tripped in his chest. The feel of Oliver's hand on his face sent a shiver all through him. He looked up at him with a steady gaze. Oliver's own was set on his lips, concentrated fully on his lips. He thought he knew what that meant, what came next, and it sent his pulse racing.

Oliver leaned in slowly. His hair flickered in the sun like soft golden wheat. Kyle's breath caught in his throat, struck by his sudden beauty.

Something twitched deep in his stomach. A sudden hunger for berry-sweet lips...

He felt air stolen from his lungs as Oliver pulled back, his eyes gone wide and white.

"The horse," Oliver said, his voice a tremble.

"What?"

"Jinny."

One word. Like ice water in his face.

Kyle sat straight up. Jinny. Something was wrong with Jinny. Fear gripped his heart and wouldn't let go. _Not again. Not again. Not again._ He turned, trying to locate her.

"She's—she's gone," Oliver whispered.

Kyle jumped to his feet, spun, searched again. He had to be wrong. He _had_ to be. But, no, she wasn't there. His own horse stood by the water, its ears twitching with each small disturbance. Oliver stood, too. Put a hand on Kyle's arm. Kyle shrugged it off.

"Where did she go?"

"I don't—I don't know."

Kyle felt his chest constrict. He tried to control his breathing. Now wasn't the time for panic.

"Okay," he said, running a hand through his hair. "Okay. Let's start at the beginning. Where _was_ she?"

Those reddened lips parted, then slammed shut. "Over here." Oliver jogged to a nearby tree limb, bare save one tiny new sprout. "Tied her up right here." He gripped the limb, then patted it a few times, as if checking to make sure it was real.

Kyle followed him over, inspecting the empty area. "You're sure this is where you put her?"

"Yes!" Oliver pointed down. "You can see her marks all around!"

Kyle studied the ground, saw the telltale sign of tracks, and conceded the point with a quick nod.

"And you gave her water? Food?"

"Yes!"

"And you made sure the knot was tight? Like I showed you?"

A hesitation.

And then, "Yes."

"Oliver."

"What?"

"Did you test the knot?"

Another pause. This one longer. "I—I think so."

"Either you did or you didn't!"

"I was distracted, okay?" Oliver snapped.

Kyle took a step back, confused. "Distracted? By what?"

Oliver's mouth tightened into a thin line. His brows sunk over his eyes. He looked like he was about to cry.

"Nothing," he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

Kyle sighed through his nose. They were wasting time. "It doesn't matter. We gotta find her."

Oliver stood still, his whole body tense.

"Come on," Kyle urged. "Get your boots on. Let's go!"

They raced to dress, barely buttoning up their shirts, tugging shoes over dirty feet. Kyle hopped on the back of his horse while Oliver stood still, his hands fisted, arms hanging tight-as-cords by his sides. Kyle reached out a hand.

"C'mon."

With a little assistance, Oliver hoisted himself up. His hand was clammy and warm, and his arms, snaking around Kyle's torso, trembled. Kyle pivoted his head back toward him.

"You okay?"

"Mm hmm," Oliver said, his voice muffled. He didn't sound okay. He sounded like he was crying.

"I need you to be with me here, Ollie." Kyle let go of one rein and squeezed his hand around Oliver's tight fist. "Can I count on you?"

"Yes," he said, a little clearer. A little stronger.

"Good." Kyle started them in a slow gallop. "You were real good at seeing her tracks back there. Can you see 'em from up here?"

A short moment passed while Oliver scanned the ground. Then, more firm, "Yes." The arms stopped trembling. "Yes, I see them."

"Atta boy," Kyle said, allowing the smallest of smiles.

They kept on like that, Oliver pointing them in the right direction, Kyle guiding the horse to follow. The sun arched above them, long past the midday mark, sinking ever lower, like an ominous clock ticking away, or a blade sloping toward the ground. Kyle shielded his eyes as their path brought them dead west. A solitary mountain loomed in the distance, high-peaked and studded with tall, spiny trees.

Oliver led them to the base of the mountain. The land sloped up at a low angle for at least half a mile before the first row of ridges and cliff faces jutted out at them.

Kyle swallowed, trying to hydrate his parched throat. Oliver's canteen had been spirited away with Jinny, and in the rush to find her, Kyle hadn't thought to refill the remaining one. "Here. Drink this." He handed the canteen off to Oliver and watched with rueful eyes as Oliver drank down the last few sips.

"You think she went up there?" He eyed the mountain as Oliver dried his mouth with the back of his hand.

The saddle jostled as Oliver hopped off to inspect the ground. He dragged his fingers along the dirt.

"The ground's damp. There may be a water source nearby she was heading for."

Kyle licked his lips. He could use a bit of that himself. "Onwards and upwards, then?"

"Onwards and upwards." Oliver hopped back up onto the horse. A sudden warmth overcame Kyle; he hadn't realized how much he missed the closeness of Oliver's arms until they were back around him again. He sucked in a deep breath.

Apple blossoms.

Another quick breath and he thought he detected the faint scent of cherry blossoms too.

The breath died in his throat.

"Oh no."

Oliver gripped him tighter around the waist. "What is it?"

Kyle felt the blood drain from his face.

"I think we're—" he croaked out. "We're on the Lord Estate."

"The Lord Estate?" Oliver breathed out, his grip growing tighter.

Kyle gazed up at the mountain. If they started out at the lake, that meant they were well north of the main road. Which also meant that they were staring at—

"Mt. Oakley," he whispered.

"What?"

"Mt. Oakley," he repeated, louder. "They say that's where the Ministers live. We have to get out of here Oliver." He swung the reins, maneuvering the horse away from the mountain.

"What ministers? Kyle, what are you talking about?"

"Later. We need to go. We need to get far away from here." He was about to send them into a fast gallop when Oliver's voice stopped him.

"What about Jinny?" A hand came down over Kyle's, pulling his tense fingers off the reins. "Kyle. We have to get her back."

Suddenly Oliver was too close. Kyle felt his body start to shake. He needed to get away, get some air, get a hold of himself. He swung his leg over the saddle and landed hard on the ground. A stabbing pain shot through his ankle and up his calf.

"Ow. Shit!"

A loud thump let him know that Oliver followed soon after. A warm hand landed on his shoulder.

"Kyle, are you okay?"

Kyle swung around, keeping as little weight on his tweaked ankle as possible.

"No, Oliver! I'm definitely _not_ okay. My horse is gone and I can't get her back!"

"Yes. We can." Oliver reached for his shoulder again. Kyle wanted to shrug him off, but didn't. "I see her tracks. We can follow her." He stared Kyle down with those crystal blue eyes. "Trust me."

Kyle wanted to. He really did. He glanced back up at the mountain.

"Do you know where we are, Oliver?"

"Mt... Mt. Oakley," he said.

"Yes. Mt. Oakley. Home of the Mt. Oakley Ministers."

"Okay. Well then, maybe they can help us find Jinny—"

"No! You don't understand, Oliver!" Kyle ran a hand through his hair. His heart was beating so fast and so hard he thought it might break through his chest. "These are not good guys. They... You've heard of Victor Lord, right?" Oliver nodded. "He hired the ministers years ago. They were supposed to be like a protection. His own personal militia. They keep the grounds free of trespassers, poachers, rustlers. Any unwanted elements."

"Okay," Oliver said, clearly not understanding the implications.

"They're hired guns, Oliver. Assassins. They shoot to kill, and they don't ask questions." Kyle clenched his jaw. The longer they stayed there chatting, the more they were inviting a bullet to the brain. But still... Jinny... She was up there. All alone.

His heart ached thinking about losing her. He wouldn't let it happen again. He would let another one leave him. Not when he could actually do something about it this time. If they were really careful, if they kept their guard up, they could sneak in, find her, and be gone without leaving a trace.

"Isn't Victor Lord dead?"

"Yes," Kyle said.

"So maybe—maybe the ministers disbanded."

"It's worse than that." Kyle swallowed again. "They say the leader, the most powerful of the ministers... they say he's evil. He did something... something real bad to one of the Lord girls."

"So why wasn't he arrested?"

"It's the son. The heir. I don't know much about him, but they say he's crazy. Just as evil as the ministers. That he drove them out of the estate and up the mountain, but that he keeps them there, sends them women and stock."

"But why?"

"As part of their continued payment. To keep the land free from trespassers. From people like _us_, Oliver."

Oliver's adam's apple bobbed and his eyes clouded over with understanding. With fear. Kyle watched him take in a deep breath, and then his chin jutted out, his shoulders squared, and the fear—still strong in his eyes—crystallized into a strange sort of determination.

He strode to the horse and pulled on the reins, leading him back to Kyle.

"Here. You take him back. Get on back to the Lakeside. I'll carry on, on foot." He reached up a hand and cupped the side of Kyle's head. "I'll find her, and I'll bring her back." The hand dropped slightly so it cupped Kyle's cheek instead. "I promise."

Kyle felt a spark run all through him, warming him, giving him strength, steadying his frantic heart and putting air back in his lungs. He nudged his cheek into Oliver's touch, then brought his own hand up to hold Oliver's there.

"No, Oliver." Kyle shook his head, which brought a slump to Oliver's shoulders. Kyle's lips tightened into a small, resolute smile, and he gripped Oliver's hand tighter. "If we do this, we do it together."

Oliver closed his eyes, inhaled, nodded. "Okay." He swallowed, and it looked like he wanted to confess something. "Kyle, I—"

"Later, Oliver," Kyle said, stopping him with his own hand on Oliver's warm, sweaty cheek. "Right now, we got a horse to find." Despite his new found resolution, he still felt a slight hitch in his chest. _And a band of murderers standing in our way,_ remained understood but unsaid.

He rolled his ankle, then tested it with a bit of weight. The pain slowly dissipated with each cautious step until it finally disappeared altogether.

They ventured forth on foot, Kyle leading his horse along by the reins, as they climbed the sloping hills of Mt. Oakley. The ground grew damper, and the smell of wet earth was both refreshing and foreboding, like entering a misty jungle full of unknown dangers. Moving slowly, they kept their footfalls light, praying to avoid detection.

After a short while, they came upon a ridge of tall boulders. Some were stacked three or four high, as if a giant had been playing with toy blocks. Moss spidered out along their bases, covering the ground in a soft green carpet.

"She came through here," Oliver whispered, pointing to the ground. There was a break in the rocks, leading out to a thickly bushed area. Kyle squinted to see if he could see any sign of Jinny's tracks. Whatever Oliver was following was lost on him completely. But he trusted Oliver. He believed in him. And he knew Jinny was close. He could feel it, deep down in his bones.

"Let's go," he said, pushing forward, Oliver right there at his side, the horse trailing behind. A surge of confidence raced through him. They could do this. Everything was going to be all right.

They snaked their way through bushes and more boulders until suddenly the path opened up and they gazed upon a shallow creek. There, across the way, her nose prodding the surface as she drank, was Jinny. Her gray coat glistened in the sunlight. Nothing had ever looked more beautiful to Kyle in his life. He handed off the reins to Oliver and took a step forward, but a hand on his shoulder stopped him.

"You hear that?" Oliver whispered.

Kyle strained his ears. He heard birds. The trickle of water through the creek. Jinny's tail swishing against her back legs.

And a man's voice. Humming. Growing ever near.

"Quick," he said, pulling Oliver down by the shoulder. They ducked behind a bush. Kyle's horse remained safely hidden behind one of the large boulders.

Every part of Kyle's body shook as he watched a man descend from the hill through a pair of short, shrubby trees. His dirty, beard-scraggled face housed a set of beady, shaded eyes underneath thick graying eyebrows, a long, bulbous nose, pocked with scars and overlarge pores, and a chapped, peeling mouth, brown teeth poking out over the bottom lip in a pronounced overbite.

Kyle looked down at the man's hands and his heart nearly stopped. He was cleaning out the barrels of a long rifle.

And his gaze was aligned directly on Jinny.

_Oh, God. No._

Time seemed to freeze. His body had gone rigid in some sort of paralytic fear. He could only crouch there and stare as the man sneaked in closer to Jinny. As he raised his rifle.

A sudden fire lit his muscles back into action and he rolled on the balls of his feet, prepared to spring forward. If he could distract the shooter, aim him away from Jinny, maybe he could skirt around behind him, gain the upper ground, find a weapon, a stone or something, and take him out...

Before he could leap into action, a large arm grabbed him around his chest and a hand flew over his mouth. Kyle struggled until he heard a familiar voice whisper, "_Shh!_" in his ear. Oliver.

It didn't help him relax at all. Not when a crazed hill-person had a rifle aimed squarely at the back of Jinny's head.

"No," he whimpered against Oliver's hand. He had to save her. He _had_ to. He couldn't save _her_, but he could still save Jinny. If only Oliver would let him go.

Oliver's grip tightened. It was no use struggling. He couldn't do it. He failed. He lost her.

He closed his eyes, waiting for the sounds—the click of the hammer, the blast of the gun powder, the thump as her body hit the ground.

His lungs ached, his head swam with fear and heartache. He tasted the salty tears running through Oliver's fingers and down to his mouth.

It was all going to end.

"_Stay_ your hand, Walter!"

Kyle's eyes shot open. The gunman lowered his rifle and turned. Jinny, confused by the sudden noise, started backing up, shaking her head, but the gunman was too quick and grabbed hold of her reins before she could escape.

Another man marched down the hill. Slow. Deliberate. As if he didn't have a single fear in the world. His voice was cold, but smooth, like a silk-covered blade. Every movement of his body seemed totally in control, measured, fluid and snake-like. Even his eyes were those of a snake, sharp and slitted.

Kyle had known fear in his life. Losing Jinny. Losing his mother. Riding for the first time. Falling for the first time. The bitter promise of a lonely life. But nothing quite sent a shiver down his spine as the look and sound of that man.

He could easily guess at his identity, from the tales he'd heard. Confirmation quickly followed.

"But Mitch—!" Walter protested.

"Are you questioning your leader, Walter? One might not consider that the cleverest of notions, my child."

"No, Messenger." Walter lowered his head in servility. "Your word is law."

Mitch circled Jinny slowly, inspecting her with a leering gaze. Kyle felt his blood boil under his skin to see someone look at her so.

"The horse is valuable." Mitch ran his fingers smoothly along the well-worn saddle. Then he turned to Walter, his gaze hard, eyes black and deadly. "The rider, however, is not." He swiveled his head slowly to take in his surroundings, first in the opposite direction, and then in theirs. Kyle stopped breathing. He felt Oliver's arms tense around him.

Mitch turned back to Walter, who gripped his rifle and displayed a mouth full of browned, crooked teeth.

"Find him," Mitch said, his voice a deadly purr. "And kill him."

* * *

(...TBC...)


	6. Chapter 6: Bad Men

**Lay Me Down**

_**Chapter Six - Bad Men**_

**

* * *

Mt. Oakley, Montana Territory. 1878.****  
****Oliver Fish, age 15.

* * *

**

Every muscle in Oliver's body ached. It felt like he'd been crouching—frozen solid—for hours, though only a few minutes had passed.

Kyle was a cord-tight bundle of nervous energy in his grip. He felt if he released even the tiniest bit of pressure, Kyle would burst out of his arms like a hummingbird taking flight. And he'd get himself shot right out of the sky.

Oliver had heard the order, loud and clear. They were to be hunted.

Well, not if he had anything to say about it.

He breathed hard through his nose. Once, twice. What would his father do in a situation like this? Would he fight? Even in the face of certain death?

No. He'd play it safe, get out of there with as little damage to himself, his property, his... his cowhand. His man.

That's what he'd always said. A rancher protects. He protects the land. He protects the stock. He protects his people. And though Oliver wasn't a rancher yet, though he didn't have any land of his own to protect, he had Kyle. Kyle may've earned wages from his father, but Oliver felt something different, deep down. Kyle was _his_. And he wasn't about to let him do anything stupid, like go and get himself killed.

He glanced around the glade for possible exit routes. A man _would_ run. That's what a real man would do. Not for himself, but for the protection of others.

Oliver closed his eyes. He wasn't quite a man yet, because he was running for himself, too. He didn't wanna die up there on that mountain anymore than he wanted to watch Kyle foolishly invite his own death.

He tightened his grip around Kyle's arms and chest. Kyle pushed back, but only slightly. His palm still covered Kyle's mouth, wet with tears and sweat.

They could sneak out quietly, the way they came in... but only if Walter started his hunt on the other side of the creek. The path was too exposed for too long. If he came after them, he'd have a clear shot. They would need to find another way out. Oliver thought there was room enough for them to squeeze through the break in the boulders on their left. From there, they would be covered. Then it was only a matter of finding their way down.

He felt Kyle tugging at his grip. Peering through the bushes, he watched as Mitch grabbed Jinny by the reins and began walking with her up the hill, cooing in her ear, rubbing her nose, humming a familiar-sounding hymn in a low, smooth voice.

Walter scratched his bristled cheek, then set about inspecting the ground for any sign of his quarry. "Where did you get to, my little rider," he singsonged. "You can come out. I ain't gonna hurt you. Lord as my witness."

Oliver might've believed him, if he hadn't cocked his rifle and raised the sight to one squinted eye. A bird landed on a tree limb, rustling the leaves. Walter swung his shoulders and let off a wild shot; the blast of gun powder boomed like thunder in the glade, sending all the birds away in a flurry of wings and disturbed air.

In the heavy silence that followed, Oliver's arms shook uncontrollably. He'd never felt so close to danger. He couldn't calm his heartbeat or catch his breath. Kyle was able to wriggle out of his loosened grip, but he didn't rush out and chase after Jinny. Instead he turned, crouching still, and grabbed Oliver's shaking hands. His face glistened with tears. Oliver wanted to reach up and wipe them away, but his arms were completely useless.

Kyle's lips straightened into a determined line and he stared at Oliver with steely eyes. Oliver wanted to absorb his strength and call it his own. And maybe he was. With each gentle sweep of Kyle's thumbs along his knuckles, Oliver felt his heart rate slow, his lungs take in air, his limbs relax as the shakes slowly abated.

The smell of burnt powder invaded his senses and made his guts clench. But Kyle was there, and Oliver was able to keep calm. And think.

Plans had formed. They just needed to bide their time. If Walter turned their way, they'd sneak south around the boulders and find another way down. If he started up the opposite hill, they were home free...

Walter kicked up some dirt before poking at the ground with the nose of his rifle. He turned and stared up the hill. Oliver held his breath.

But the sound of boots splashing through the creek as Walter crossed over to their side wrapped a heavy weight around his heart.

They were now forced to venture into untraveled territory and hope for the best. He slowly stood and motioned for Kyle to follow. Kyle nodded, apparently in completely understanding, and they slowly, silently guided the horse back around the southern end of the boulders, hiding from Walter's immediate sight. They found hard ground and stayed on it, hoping to conceal their own tracks as best as possible.

Oliver kept one eye on the sky. They'd come up the mountain due west, so they kept on an eastern bent as much as the close-growing shrubs and dense copse of pines would allow. A rock wall loomed on their left. They'd have to find a break in it at some point if they were ever going to head down. Oliver could still hear the creek nearby. It had to lead out the mountain at some point, and would be as good a guide as any to the break in the wall.

"You think he's tracking us?" he whispered.

Kyle kept his gaze forward. "Most likely. But he's not shooting yet." He glanced at Oliver with a small grin. "And that's all I care about."

Their path gradually sloped down. The sound of water grew closer. They were crawling right along the creekside, just a few thick bushes between them and open space. Oliver could almost believe they were close to escape.

The rock wall inched closer to them, pushing them toward the creek. The air grew thick, almost as if it were closing in on them too. Thorns and sharp twigs tore at Oliver's skin and clothes as they scrambled through the bushes. The horse tugged at his reins, resistant to follow, but they eventually guided him in and pushed through to the other side.

Where Oliver's heart immediately plummeted into his stomach.

The creek narrowed to a point, no larger than ten inches across, then trickled through a tiny crack in a tall cliff-face, surrounding them on all sides.

A dead-end.

He swiveled and stared at Kyle, whose face was as blank as the stone that trapped them. He turned back to the wall, completely heartbroken. His mouth had dropped open, but he couldn't muster the energy to close it again.

"What are we gonna do?" he finally managed to croak out.

Kyle didn't answer. Oliver turned to him—

—only to have the wind knocked out of his stomach as Kyle barreled into him, grabbing him into a fierce hug.

They stayed that way for a while. One of Kyle's arms snaked up and cradled the back of Oliver's head, fingers running through his hair. "If this is really the end... I'm glad to have known you, Oliver Fish."

Oliver didn't have the words, didn't know yet if he was ready to say goodbye, so he planted a kiss on the top of Kyle's head instead. He took in a deep breath, trying to capture the smell of him. If he were to choose the last thing he could remember before leaving this life, it would be that smell. Everything around them seemed to stop. All that existed was this embrace.

The horse snorted, breaking the moment.

Kyle took a small step back, keeping one hand on Oliver's shoulder. Something lit up in his eyes then, spreading through his whole face, until his mouth broke into a wide smile and he burst into sudden laughter.

"What is it, Kyle?" Oliver turned, trying to see what had lifted his friend's spirits. Perhaps an escape route that had eluded them before?

He turned in a full circle, expecting at any moment to see their path to freedom. But he was met by the same impassable cliff as before. The same creek. The same grove of spiny bushes. Whatever it was that had given Kyle hope, Oliver couldn't see it.

"I've got it," Kyle finally said. He was staring at the horse.

"Got... what?"

"I think it's time we do a little hunting of our own." Kyle grabbed his hat off the horse's pack and pulled it firmly over his head.

"I don't—"

Kyle cut him off. "I'm not gonna wait here like a bull to slaughter, Ollie. If we're getting ourselves out of this mess, we're doing it fighting. And I say we take the fight to _him_."

Oliver gaped at him. "The fight? Kyle, we don't have any weapons, no way to defend ourselves!"

"Sure we do." Kyle nodded at the horse.

Oliver shook his head at him, completely at a loss.

Kyle slung an arm around his shoulder. "Let me explain, my dear friend..."

* * *

It was suicide. Oliver didn't want to say so out loud, but he knew it in his heart. They were walking right up to death and poking it in the stomach.

The horse shuffled nervously underneath him, seemingly just as restless and unconvinced of their success.

They had followed the creek back until they found a suitable geography for ambush. After drinking their fill and replenishing the canteen, Oliver and the horse hid between two boulders on the creek side of the hedge-wall, while Kyle crouched in the bushes. A wide opening in the bushes spanned between them. Kyle had dug some noticeable tracks into the dirt, hoping it would lead Walter right to them.

They only had to wait a few minutes before the sound of a man's footsteps could be heard. As they came closer, Oliver felt his hands unconsciously grip the reins harder. He swallowed hard and wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his wrist.

Walter's wide-brimmed hat came into sight, seeming to bounce above the bushes. They had to time this _exactly_ right. If Oliver was even a second late, Kyle was a sitting duck.

He watched Kyle, waiting for the signal...

The hat bounced closer. Kyle brought his hand to his mouth, then coughed loudly.

Oliver charged out from between the boulders just as Walter came through the bushes, his back turned, his attention diverted by Kyle's cough. Oliver grabbed the reins and pulled with all his strength. The horse reared up before its hooves came crashing down on Walter's back.

The man fell to the ground in an unconscious heap, the rifle slipping from his grip and sliding directly in front of Kyle, who stood from his hiding place, grabbed up the gun, and raced to Oliver.

"You were perfect," he breathed out, winking at Oliver, then unraveled a length of rope from the saddle.

He quickly tied Walter's hands, then his feet, thoroughly testing each knot. Oliver thought he saw Kyle glance at him then, and a sudden coldness came over him. This was his fault. If he had only tested Jinny's knot better, they'd never have lost her. They'd never have found themselves in a life-or-death situation.

"Kyle, I'm sorry."

Kyle looked up at him, confused. "Now is _not_ the time, Oliver. Here, take his boot and fill it with water. I want to wake this son of a bitch up and get some answers."

Oliver pushed on anyway, needing to say it. "I'm sorry I lost Jinny."

Kyle shook his head, staring down at the unconscious man with hatred in his eyes. "Haven't lost her yet."

"What are you—" Oliver swallowed. "What are you talking about?"

Ignoring the question, Kyle nudged the unconscious man with his boot. Then he reared back and gave him a hard kick to the stomach. The man groaned, blinking open his eyes. When he realized his hands and feet were tied, he began struggling, striking out at Kyle with his legs out and biting at his roped hands. Kyle looked incredibly unbothered by his aggression.

He slowly lifted the gun and pointed it at Walter.

"Where'd he take the horse?"

"I'll kill you, you little rat!"

Kyle's only answer was a smile. He pulled back on the gun's automatic loading mechanism.

"The horse," Kyle said, still smiling. "And _then_ you can kill me. Pal."

Oliver leapt forward. "Kyle! What are you doing? Let's just get out of here!" They were free and clear now. They just needed to hop on the horse and ride home, to safety. Oliver tugged on Kyle's sleeve. "C'mon."

Kyle nudged him away with his elbow, never taking his eyes off his struggling captive. "I'm getting my horse back, Oliver." His eyes narrowed into slits. "With or without you."

Oliver took a step back, as if slapped. He thought they were in this together. But now Kyle was acting stupid and ignoring reason...

"You'll get yourself killed, Kyle!"

Kyle lifted the gun slightly. The man on the ground flinched.

"I'll be all right," Kyle said, his voice as cold as steel.

Oliver raised his arms in protest. "You don't even know how to use that thing."

"Sure I do." His voice was calm, his movements measured, as he leaned in and placed the barrel of the gun directly between Walter's eyes.

He was really going to do it. He was really going to kill a man in cold blood. Oliver felt his heart stop.

Walter spat on Kyle's boots. "The Messenger will have you strung up for this, you little cretin."

Kyle sneered down at him. His trigger finger twitched, spurring Oliver into action.

"No!" Oliver jumped forward and jerked the gun out of Kyle's hands. Before he could even register Kyle's enraged grunt, he flung the rifle into the creek and watched it drift away with the current. Kyle ran up to him, a horrified expression on his face, then shoved Oliver square in the chest.

"What'd you do _that_ for?"

Oliver felt like shoving back, but steadied himself. Fighting wasn't gonna get them off the mountain any faster.

His heart still raced like a locomotive in his chest. "I wasn't about to let you kill a man!"

"I wasn't gonna kill him! I need him to tell me where Jinny is!" Kyle took a menacing step forward.

"Well then," Oliver said, crossing his arms over his chest, mostly to protect himself from another push, "I wasn't about to let you take on a whole gang of killers with naught but a rifle!"

Kyle spun around and paced a few steps away, hands on his hips. "God damn it, Oliver! God damn _you!_"

Now Oliver _really_ felt like shoving Kyle. He had a lot nerve getting angry at Oliver for saving his sorry life. He followed after Kyle and poked him hard in the chest instead.

"Well I'm sorry if I didn't want to see you hang a death sentence around your own stupid neck! Hate me if you want, but do it fast." He pointed down at Walter, who was watching their squabble with silent interest. "Because he's working at them knots and I'd really like to see this damned mountain for the last time as were riding away from it!"

Kyle pursed his lips and stared up at him under the brim of his hat with iron-hard eyes. Then he stormed off toward the horse.

"Fine."

Oliver followed quickly after. "Fine?"

"It's getting late." Kyle hopped on the saddle and adjusted the reins. His gaze was dark and lifeless. "Wouldn't want you to miss your supper."

Oliver was too tired to fight with him any longer. And though he wouldn't dignify Kyle's jab with a response, he _was_ just a little hungry.

"What about him?" Oliver asked as he joined Kyle atop the horse.

Kyle sniffed, then started the horse into a slow trot. "He'll be fine." He tipped his hat at the prostrate man as they passed him by. "Won't you, sir?"

"I'll find you little maggots," Walter sneered at them. "I'll find you and I'll finish the job."

"Yeah?" Kyle said. "Good luck with that."

And then they were off, through the opening in the hedge, back along the length of the rock wall toward the mossy glade of boulders where they first saw Jinny.

Blood jittered all through Oliver's veins, setting his whole body on edge. Adrenaline zinged up and down each limb. They were alive. They were alive and together. He rested his chin on Kyle's shoulder and squeezed him tighter around the middle. Back when he was teaching Oliver to ride, it used to make Kyle smile.

Today, it only made his lower lip quiver.

The ground started to even out. Oliver risked a quick turn of the head. The mountain was behind them. Though he didn't know if they'd ever truly be free of it. The horse, seemingly as anxious as they were to leave that wretched place, dipped his head and raced along the open prairie. Kyle urged him on. They were still, after all, trespassing on Lord land.

"Look!" Oliver pointed toward the distance, where he could just make out a round, white blur. He squinted his eyes, and the object came into focus.

A carriage, glossy like marble, driven by four large, white horses. Its golden wheels glimmered in the light of the lowering sun. Oliver felt his breath catch. It was as if, after a harrowing trek through the depths of hell, they'd stumbled into a childhood fairy tale once more. "It's real..." he said, wonder filling his voice.

Just like the stories Kyle used to tell him, back in those innocent days of youth. How Kyle's eyes would light up when he'd describe the beauty and the grandeur of the Lords. Oliver could picture it so clearly in his head: the heiresses tucked safely inside, gloved hands resting daintily on frocks of yellow and blue, their petticoats starched and stiff, blond curls tied back with satin ribbons. Oliver tugged on Kyle's shirt sleeve and pointed again. "Kyle, y'see that...?"

But Kyle didn't turn his head. He only _heeyaw!_-ed and sent them into a faster gallop. The carriage became a tiny white dot on the horizon, then finally faded into nothing.

* * *

The sun dipped perilously low.

His leisurely walk and afternoon of reading had stretched far beyond the hour of explanations. But he would have to try anyway.

Oliver gulped down the large lump that had been growing in his throat as the main property came into view.

At first Kyle made a beeline for the stables, but a hushed, _"Shit!"_ and a quick swerve of the horse let Oliver know that those plans had come to a sudden reversal. He looked over Kyle's shoulder and felt his heart lurch in his chest.

Two figures stood outside the stable barn, their backs turned, in the midst of a heated conversation. They were still a few hundreds yards off, but Oliver could tell from the staunch-shouldered stance of the taller man, his austere, straight back, his expensive "Boss of the Plains" Stetson hat, that it was his father.

Hunched and stout, the other was presumably Hector.

And they obviously knew something was amiss.

"What now?" he said in a low voice. He realized then how close his cheek was to Kyle's as they rode.

Turning his head so their noses almost touched, Kyle said, "Now—?" A sad smile crept into the corners of his mouth. "Now I get you safely out of the way while I go and face the music."

Kyle? Alone? Oliver had read his father's body language pretty clearly. Whoever came back horseless was in for a mess of trouble.

They made a long loop around the south end of the property, circling the perimeter of the covered sheep paddock, when Kyle finally slowed the horse to a trot, then a full stop next to the aging, peeling wood of the paddock walls. The earthy odor of sheep dung hung heavily in the air around them.

Kyle jerked his head back. "Get off."

"What?"

"Get off the horse. Get back to the main house. They'll be waiting for you."

"But what about you, Kyle?"

"Oliver—!" Kyle sucked in a quick breath, his nostrils flaring. "Get off the damn horse and get back to the house."

He'd spent his whole life taking orders, but this was one order Oliver was determined to ignore. He settled deeper into the saddle and threaded his fingers together into a fist around Kyle's midsection.

"No." He wasn't going anywhere. And there wasn't a darn thing Kyle could do about it.

Except whatever it was he just did that sent them both tumbling off the horse and onto the ground.

The horse backed away with a nervously high-kneed gait, while Oliver rolled onto his back and Kyle sat on his haunches, wiping the dust from his clothes in harsh, brusque strokes. His expression was sad, but determined.

"I don't want to fight with you about this, Oliver."

"Then don't!" Oliver stood and reached down a hand to help Kyle up. "I thought—I thought we were in this, y'know, _together_."

Kyle ignored the hand, crossing his wrists over his knees in a pointed refusal to stand. "I thought that too." He glanced up, his eyes like flint. "'Til you threw my gun in the damn creek."

Oliver didn't know what to say to that. Well, he knew what he _wanted_ to say, but it was far too crude to speak aloud. His neglected hand still outstretched, he shoved it in his pocket and marched back toward the horse.

He was about to mount when Kyle's voice stopped him. It was soft. Desperate.

"Oliver, don't. Please."

"Kyle, if anyone should do it—"

"Me. It should be me."

Oliver shook his head. "No. _I_ lost her, Kyle. It was my fault. I thought I had tied her up, but... I... I..." Images flashed through his mind, bombarding him with memories and sensations so strong he thought he might fall over. Over and over he saw it, in tortuous slow motion. Kyle, standing on the edge of the pool, his bare skin bathed in light, how Oliver's heart had fluttered, how his chest grew tight, how his fingers trembled, how every cell in his body seemed to stand up and take notice.

He tried pushing those memories aside and focusing on others, on the knot, on tying the knot, on testing the knot. But... nothing. He couldn't even remember if he'd done it at all.

"It's my fault, Kyle. My fault." His voice cracked. Tears stung in the corner of his eyes, but he wouldn't let them slip out. No. That was not what a man did. But the guilt so overwhelmed him. How could he have been so negligent? How could he have let such—such base and impure instincts take him over like that? How could he be sure it wouldn't happen again?

"Whatever happens," he said, swallowing down the lump in his throat, "I deserve it. I deserve to be punished."

He grabbed the saddle and was about to heft himself onto the horse when a hand grabbed his collar and pulled him away. The world spun for a moment, and then his back slammed against the rickety wooden wall of the paddock. It wobbled underneath his weight.

"_Don't_ say that!" Kyle was staring at him with fierce eyes, his mouth a thin, angry line. He grabbed a fistful of Oliver's shirt collar and pushed him back up against wall again. Oliver thought for a moment all three of them—he, Kyle, and the wall—would topple. "Don't you _ever_ say that."

"It's true," he whispered. The stinging in his eyes grew unbearable.

"Look, Oliver—" Kyle breathed in and out through his nose. Something moved behind his gaze, skittish and unsure. A fug of desperation sat on his shoulders. "She was _my_ responsibility. She was _my_ horse!" His voice broke. Tears glistened in his eyes. "I never shoulda—" He cut off, shaking his head and releasing Oliver's shirt.

"What, Kyle? Never shoulda what?"

Kyle turned, then pivoted back around to face Oliver, a weary hand dragging through his hair. Oliver had never seen him look so miserable.

"I never shoulda trusted her with you."

A moment of silence hung between them as the words sunk in. Oliver fell back against the fence. All the air fled from his chest, as if Kyle had just punched him in the lungs. "Wow," he mouthed, his voice barely a whisper. "That's what—that's what you really think of me?"

Kyle sniffed, and a tear slipped down his dirt-smudged cheek. "Go home, Oliver." And then, very quietly, "Let me do this."

Oliver felt his lip quiver, with anger or hurt, he didn't know. Maybe both. Kyle didn't trust him. Kyle was sending him away. He felt like a scolded child, belittled and inconsequential. And that numb expression on Kyle's face... He couldn't stand looking at it any longer.

He pushed himself off the paddock wall and walked as fast as he could away from Kyle. He didn't even know what direction he was heading, or why. All that mattered was getting away, getting space, clearing his head, figuring out what to do, what had gone wrong, how their perfect day had turned into such a nightmare.

Horse hooves clomped away behind him. Kyle was returning to the stables, one horse short, to confront his awaiting superiors.

Served him right, Oliver thought. Whatever happened, Kyle had asked for it. That's what he got for being a stubborn, short-sighted, fool of a boy. He wanted Oliver to go home, safe and sound? Fine. Absolutely fine. Oliver had no problem with that.

Stiff grass collapsed under his feet as he walked. With each step his heart grew heavier and darker. Things had changed. He knew it. Ever since he saw Kyle so... exposed at the lake.

Things were never going to be the same.

He'd wanted to protect Kyle. From Mitch and Walter, from his own wild impulses. Only Kyle fought off his protection at every turn. There was nothing Oliver could have done differently. Yet... each thud of his heart was like a hammer slamming down on his chest.

On and on he walked, aimless.

Or so he thought. It was only when the outside walls of the stables were directly before him that he realized he'd circled back and followed Kyle's path. Peeling paint chips crumbled under his touch as he ran his fingers along the wall. Just like he'd done when he'd asked Kyle for his first riding lesson. And like then, he carefully peered in through an eye-sized hole left by a popped knot of wood.

Kyle and his father stood facing each other. From a darkened corner, Hector squinted at them with his half-blind eyes. Kyle's head hung low, and he spoke quietly. Oliver couldn't make out his words.

His father, on the other hand, spoke in a booming voice. "I've sent men packing for less than this." He paced in front of Kyle, hands clasped behind his back. "If this were the rangers, boy, you'd be in danger of losing one of those pretty little fingers."

Kyle's hands twitched, but he kept them limp by his sides.

Oliver's father stopped pacing and turned deliberately toward Kyle. "Bring me the riding crop."

Wide eyes shot up, dark and fearful. The same way they'd get at school when Miss LaMott brought out the switch. With slow, measured steps, Kyle did what he was told. Once Kyle had handed over the whip, Oliver expected him to hold out his knuckles, like he used to.

It shocked him when Kyle began pulling at the buttons of his shirt instead. His fingers stumbled over the buttons a few times, and he kept his shaded eyes firmly on the crop. His shirt discarded, Kyle turned, exposing his pale, bare back, and rested his weight against one of the large support posts.

For the second time that day Oliver had watched in frozen silence as Kyle undressed. But this time, instead of filling him with a strange sort of wonder, his whole body was soaked in dread.

"Someone stole my horse," his father said. "My saddle. My riding equipment. My goddamn horse shoes. All of this, under _your_ watch. While you were off gallivanting with—" He paused. The air in the barn seemed to crackle with energy the longer the words remained unsaid. Oliver's lungs hurt from holding his breath. How much had Kyle told him?

"While you were off doing God knows what," his father finally finished.

Oliver could see Kyle close his eyes, suck his lips into his mouth as he waited for the first strike to come.

"You'll give me your wages, of course, until the debt is paid."

Kyle nodded.

"And we'll see about getting that fence up you wanted to build. People sneaking onto a man's property, coming right into his barn and taking his stock..." He shook his head in disbelief. "That just isn't right. Fucking thieves. Not a pinch of honor among them."

Oliver flinched. He'd never heard his father utter such profanity.

But despite his shock, it answered a question for him. Kyle had lied. Or, at least, he hadn't told the entire truth. No one had sneaked into the stable barn—in broad daylight, no less—and ridden off with Jinny. Well, unless Oliver were to count himself.

Kyle's back was still turned. Oliver had forgotten for a moment about the riding crop in his father's hands, until it smacked down against his large palm. The sound was unnaturally loud in the confined space of the barn.

"And what do you have to say for yourself, boy?"

"That it won't—won't happen again. Sir." Kyle's voice was low, but it didn't tremble.

"Good," his father said curtly, before he reached over patted Kyle on the head. "That's what I like to hear, my boy."

And then the first stroke came down.

Kyle winced, hissing through his teeth. A bright pink line slashed across his upper shoulders.

_Crack!_

Another stroke. Another line. Another wince.

_Crack!_

Oliver had to look away. He couldn't watch. Not when he saw the shiny wet streak on Kyle's cheek, reflecting the light of the lantern. He turned and slid down the wall, crouching on the ground with his knees tucked into his chest.

He felt the sobs building in his throat. Oh, how they ached! But he couldn't push them down, couldn't stop his eyes from watering, couldn't wipe the tears away fast enough before they were replaced with fresh ones.

He wasn't supposed to cry. That wasn't what a man did. A memory, a child's voice, floated through his thoughts. _"I'll take your tears..."_

_Crack!_

"Damn him," he whispered. Every tear, every choking sob, brought with it more anger, more resentment.

If only Kyle had let him take the blame—the blame that was rightfully his. His pa may have whupped him, but he would have seen his son as a _man_. Not some cowering child hiding his tears behind his arm.

He was supposed to protect Kyle. Kyle was _his_. Not his father's.

A fire was burning under Oliver's skin. How could Kyle have done this? How could he have put this wall between them? Oliver felt like his entire chest was going to cave in, like someone had ripped out his heart and replaced it with an anvil.

Just a few hours ago they'd been feeding each other fruit in dappled sunlight, reveling in innocent pleasure. His heart had been as light as a feather.

_Crack!_

But they weren't innocent anymore.

It was all gone. It was all lost.

* * *

(...TBC...)


	7. Chapter 7: Life Lessons

**Lay Me Down**

_**Chapter Seven - Life Lessons From The Undertaker**_

* * *

**Lakeside Prairie, Montana Territory. 1878.****  
****Kyle Lewis, age 15.

* * *

**

The inky black night threatened to swallow him, and an icy wind whipped across his face. The oil-drained lamp clanged against the horse's haunches with the beat of each stride. He rode fast, as if hounds nipped at the horse's ankles. That damned unbearable itch taunted his shoulder again as the coarse fabric of his shirt dragged across healing skin.

But it was all worth it. With a quick move, he tucked an elbow tight to his ribs. The stolen goods remained secure under his vest.

No. Not stolen.

Recovered. And he'd see them back in the hands of their rightful owner. As soon as he could—_how did that fancy saying go?_ Screw his courage to the sticking place.

The dark shapes of the ranch came into view as the sky grayed out, signaling the coming of sunrise. No one was there to meet him at the stables. He settled the horse back into place, then scattered fresh hay on the ground. No one need know he'd been out.

A thin line of yellow crested the horizon. The walls of his quarters, weathered and bleached, trembled as he closed the door behind him, even at such a light touch. He tiptoed past his father's sleeping form. Drool stains dotted the sheet beneath his head. More light peaked in through the windows. Soon the ranch would come alive. Soon Kyle would be expected at the shearing station. But first, he thought, gripping the small bundle in both hands, he had a prize to store away safe.

**

* * *

Lakeside Ranch, Montana Territory. 1878.****  
****Oliver Fish, age 15.

* * *

**

Oliver was as mad as a hornet.

Oh, to hell with the flowery language. He was _pissed off_. It'd been weeks, and Kyle still hadn't talked to him. He'd gone and ruined everything, and then just continued on like none of their friendship ever meant anything. Sure, it was sheep-shearing season, and Kyle was busy with that on top of his usual chores, but that didn't mean there wasn't _any_ time for apologizing.

Oliver had even made it easy for him. He'd sneaked out of his room one night, waiting until the house was still with silence and sleep, Kyle's favorite book under his arm, ready to accept peace, to silently forgive Kyle and move on...

But the shutter. That darned broken shutter. Where once it teetered by one hinge, cracked down the middle and easily shoved aside, now it was mended, fresh young wood gloating in the frame, blocking him from entry. It was a message. A very clear message. _Stay out, Oliver Fish. You're not wanted here._

He'd taken one look at that shutter, swallowed his offer of peace, and gone straight back to his bedroom, only to toss and turn all night, disturbed by Kyle's rejection.

The restlessness didn't stop there. He was testy with his Latin tutor, short-tempered with Salma, uninterested in his mother's updates on the neighbors' daughters' dogs' sniffles, or whatever it was she filled the silences with when she couldn't take them any longer.

He avoided his father altogether.

And he thought about Kyle a lot.

He practiced in his head what he wanted to say to him—if he ever saw him again—but nothing felt right. Really, all he wanted was to see him, to make sure he was okay. That he wasn't too badly hurt. But even then... something dark twisted in Oliver's soul.

He couldn't articulate exactly what it was he was feeling, but he knew it wasn't what he was supposed to be feeling. And that nameless guilt sat heavy on his shoulders, haunting his every move, thought, breath.

It was a cool afternoon. Crisp spring air breezed across his face as he sat on the wooden porch swing, a book closed around his finger, the trapped digit marking his place. He kicked himself into a limp sway, back and forth, and watched with feigned interest as two dark bird-shapes glided across the silky blue southern sky. If he squinted, he could just make out the dark walls of the sheep paddock.

Kyle would be there, with Hector and the temporary laborers, doing the arduous work of trimming each sheep head-to-hind and bundling the wool. Oliver pictured him there, shirtless—as he'd been at the lake—beads of sweat dotting his flushed skin. A streak of dirt smudged across his pale cheek. Smiling that charming smile...

Blinking hard, Oliver shook his head to cast the image aside. His own skin had broken into a sweat, his hands clammy, his face impossibly warm. That feeling returned. The one he couldn't put a name to. All he knew was that it was like an itch running all through him, making his blood flow fast in his veins, his vision cloud over, his breaths ragged and quick.

It unsettled him. If only he could figure out what it was. Then he could do something about it.

He felt something strange in his pants. He looked down at his lap and his eyes widened. _Oh._ Well... that couldn't be good.

_"What are you doing?"_ he hissed at his trousers, totally at a loss.

Before he could even process what was happening, a shadow passed over him, tall and wide-shouldered. His father, climbing the porch steps two at a time. Oliver scrambled, quickly covering the uninvited mound on his lap with his book. He gulped down the embarrassing sounds his throat desperately wanted to emit.

"Pa!" he squeaked out, despite himself.

"Here. Get up son," he said, extending a hand. "Let's go."

Oliver glanced at the open palm. Suddenly, he flashed back to the barn, to the sound of the crop as it smacked against flesh.

His jaw clenched. "Go where?" he said, leaving off the usual accompanying _sir_. His unwelcome problem subsided as visions of charming smiles were replaced with winces, red marks, tears.

"That's enough of that, boy," his father said.

"Enough of what?"

"You're acting like your mother when she gets herself into a snit." He clapped a hat over Oliver's head, a little roughly. "Come on."

Acting like his mother. A woman. Weak and emotional. The corners of Oliver's mouth tugged down. He ignored the misty sting in his eyes, stood, the book slipping from his lap, and squared his shoulders, attempting to present strength, confidence, assurance. All the qualities he wished he had.

"Bring the horses," his father said. "I know you're a better rider than you let on." A weathered finger jabbed close to Oliver's nose. "And don't you get smart with me again."

"Yes sir," he mumbled.

* * *

A cloud of rust puffed into the air as the saloon doors swung in on worn hinges. Oliver coughed. Plumes of cigarette and cigar smoke cast the darkened, noisy room in an ominous blue-gray pallor. He followed his father across the room, passing tables peopled by men with graying beards, tanned skin, dirty hands and hard eyes. One of them glanced up at him and peeled his cracked lips over a mouth full of blackened, tobacco-stained teeth. Oliver quickly shifted his gaze. He wasn't used to seeing such rough-looking men. The only time he'd been this close to one before had been...

Had been Walter.

A sudden fear seized his chest, making his heart run wild.

Walter. What if he was here? What if he saw him? Would he kill him, like he promised?

Oliver pulled his hat down further over his face, then hustled to catch up with his pa.

"Gannon," his pa said to the barkeep. "Whiskey. Neat."

"And for the boy?"

"Something strong. Something you wouldn't give a boy." He slapped a hand on Oliver's shoulder. Oliver darted his head around, hoping no one was paying attention to them. They were so exposed. And if the ministers were there... But his father was there, too. It was a comfort—he felt safe and protected in his father's company.

The barkeep, a tall man with the darkest skin Oliver had ever seen, slid two small glasses toward them. Oliver couldn't help but stare at his hair. It was fashioned in long, black ropes. He'd never seen anything like it, even in the etchings and engravings of wild African men from his books.

"Needing something else, boy?" Gannon said in his baritone voice. He'd caught Oliver staring.

Oliver shook his head and, in place of having anything to say, swallowed his drink in one quick gulp.

He almost choked on it. His eyes welled up and his throat burned.

"G—good stuff," he coughed out.

"Perhaps we'll make a man of you yet," his father said, smiling. A strong hand came down on Oliver's back, and it sent him into another coughing fit.

Gannon laughed. "Wouldn't throw a parade down Main Street just yet." He refilled Oliver's glass.

"Kirby!" his father called out to a man at a back table. "You got a minute?" And then he was gone, leaving Oliver by himself at the bar. He perched on his stool, feeling like a bird in a cage.

He sat there for a while, turning his shot glass between his fingers, careful to keep his hands and wrists off the bar-top; it looked as though it had never been wiped down and a greasy layer of grime coated its surface. Even the air in the place, dusty and muggy and thick, bitter with the smell of alcohol and unwashed skin, made him feel uncomfortably unclean.

"You look miserable."

"Hmm?" Oliver turned his head. A man stood over him, dressed all in black. A tall, dark hat sat atop his head, doing its best to cover his shoulder-length, greasy hair. His pale face housed a trimmed beard, a wide, flat nose, and small, beady eyes. He took the stool next to Oliver.

"When they call it poison, they don't really mean it, you know."

Oliver gripped his glass tighter. He wished his pa would come back, but he seemed to be rapt in an important conversation with a couple of plain-clothed men and a Sheriff's Deputy. The deputy's presence put Oliver's fears at ease. That didn't stop him from trying to shrink himself into invisibility, though.

"Gannon," the man said, pointing down to Oliver's untouched drink. "Same." He settled into his seat, taking sips of his drink like Oliver had seen some of the older men do. The ones who weren't afraid to be ridiculed. He didn't seem like he was going anywhere anytime soon, and he kept staring at Oliver's face.

"Can I, um... can I help you with something, sir?"

"McBain."

"What?"

He pushed out his hand. It was cold and clammy. "John McBain."

"Oh. Um, Fish."

McBain raised an eyebrow.

"Oliver Fish," he said, then instantly regretted it. _Idiot. Giving your name away to God knows whom._ "That's my father over there. With the deputy. George Fish. Maybe you—you know him?" He hoped it was enough of a hint to send the stranger on his way. Even if the man meant no harm, Oliver didn't like small-talk. It made him nervous and sweaty. He never could trust himself to say anything clever or interesting.

He suddenly wished Kyle were there with him. He'd know what to do. How to act. _You'd be dead up on that mountain if it weren't for Kyle._

McBain didn't move. He sat next to Oliver, staring ahead, then turning to stare at him. Quiet. Dangerous.

"Um..."

"You seem troubled, kid."

"No... no, I'm fine."

"First time in town?"

"Y—yes." Oliver felt like he was being interrogated. He took a sip of the second whiskey the barman had slammed down in front of him, trying not to make a face. It gave him courage. "Are you—are you going to kill me?" he whispered.

McBain laughed. "Not exactly part of the job description, Fish."

"So you're not—" He swallowed, trying to get the burning flavor out of his mouth. "You're not a minister?"

McBain leaned in close. "Men of God, they don't come into houses like this." He pointed up to the saloon's second level, though Oliver didn't know why.

They sat for a while in silence. Oliver sipped his drink, though he hated every taste of it. McBain ordered several more and pushed half of them toward Oliver.

"You know, Fish," he said. "I had this girl, once. Fiery. Passionate. Red hair, the sharpest blue eyes, ample..." He made a strange gesture at his chest "...spirit."

"Oh?" Oliver said, because he didn't know what else to say.

"But I messed up. Kept myself at a distance."

Oliver shifted in his seat. The subject suddenly made him uncomfortable. "Does she live in a different town?"

"Emotional distance. I was too wrapped up in my job. Made it my whole life."

"Why are you telling me all this?"

"I dunno. Young kid like you... just don't wanna see you repeat my mistakes."

"I'm not... I don't even have a girl. Yet."

"Hmm." McBain was inspecting him again. It unnerved Oliver.

"What?"

"It's just, in my line of work... I know heartbreak when I see it."

Oliver opened his mouth, about to argue, when a loud, high pitched squeal interrupted him.

"Is that my Johnny Boy?" A small woman with a wild nest of blond hair grabbed her skirts and hiked down the staircase. Without so much as an introduction, she turned McBain by the shoulders and hopped onto his lap. She squeezed his cheeks with her fingers, making his lips purse. "Why so mopey, my man? Rembernixing bout my Nattie again?" She glanced over at Oliver. "I tell you, kid, the man never cracks a smile any more. Well, not that he ever was much for showing off them purdy whites."

Oliver had never seen such an uncouth woman in his life. She kept her glassy gaze on him, obviously expecting him to speak.

"Your Nattie?" he finally said. "Is she your... daughter?"

"Close to. One of my girls, fore she found out she was a hair-rest. One of Queen Victoria's lostuns, we call her. Where'd she finally get to, Johnny Boy? Ran off with that handsome Mr. Banker, my girl did, 'cause you was too scared or too stupid to make an honest woman outta her." She hopped off McBain's lap and leaned over the bar. Her dress threatened to expose her in a way that would have made Oliver blush even harder than he already was. "Randy-randy Randall James," she said to Gannon. "You gonna give Foxy Roxy her sugar or what?"

"And how much bourbon do you want mixed with said sugar, m'lady?"

She smiled a wide, bear-trap smile. "How much you got back there?"

"For you, Roxanne? Probably not enough."

McBain laid some coins on the bar. "See you around, Fish." He seemed sad somehow. "And remember what I said."

Oliver's curiosity about the mysterious man piqued. He turned to Roxy, who was swirling her pinky finger around the inside of her shot glass.

"He said something about... about his line of work? What exactly is it that he does?"

Roxy grinned at him, then he felt a small hand grip his upper thigh. "Oh, you know. He handles stiffs all day." The hand rubbed up a little higher. "He and I have that in common."

Oliver's cheeks flared up. The sensation in his pants brought to mind his little problem from earlier in the day, when he'd been on the porch. Thinking about Kyle. He quickly slid into the empty stool next to him, evading that unwelcome hand.

"Down girl," Gannon said. "Don't want to scare the pup." He looked at Oliver. "Dead bodies, boy-o. Man's the undertaker. It's a lucky son of a bitch who doesn't know his face around these parts."

"Why?"

"Means your loved ones are still with you."

Oliver's rogue mind wandered to Kyle again. He lifted his drink and finished it in one swallow. He didn't cough this time.

The sound of a chair tipping over and glass breaking turned his attention to the back of the dark room where the gambling table was set up. A man had his pistol drawn, aimed at the forehead of the man across from him. Oliver glanced at the Sheriff's Deputy. But he, like everyone else, ignored the ruckus, nodding his head at something Oliver's father was saying and shooting wads of tobacco into a spittoon. Oliver thought he would feel more afraid, that he would run and hide. But after the mountain... things had changed.

The gun-less man had both hands over a pile of coins in the center of the table.

"Take your hands off my money, you filthy cocksucker!"

Oliver paused. Cock sucker? Why would anyone want to suck on a roost—

_Oh._ He understood. The other thing. And his cheeks felt like they were on fire. He tipped his hat even lower, and hoped that the images in his head would go away soon, because they were making him feel things that he really didn't know if he should feel. The same things he would feel sometimes when he thought about Kyle...

He almost jumped out of his skin when a hand clapped down on his shoulder.

"Time to go, son," his pa said, glancing at Oliver's empty glass, then at Roxanne. "Can't be wasting all day on drink and women. Man's still got to work." He leaned in close. "But that doesn't mean he can't have a little fun every now and then. I want you to remember that, okay?"

"Y—yes sir." They quietly exited the saloon, gun standoff still in progress.

Oliver closed his eyes and thought about McBain's words. _Remember what I said..._

_I messed up. Kept myself at a distance._

He closed his fist into a tight ball. He knew what needed to be done.

**

* * *

Lakeside Ranch, Montana Territory. 1878.****  
****Kyle Lewis, age 15.

* * *

**

The house was quiet and dark. Only the whisper of his footsteps echoed against the walls. Kyle's back ached and his muscles felt stretched beyond recognition, but he felt good, too. It was the kind of tiredness born from a good day's work. From bringing benefit to the Lakeside. From doing something worth doing.

Didn't mean he wasn't thankful for the end of the day, the freedom of his feet from too-small boots, the license to act on his own whims, to do things of his own choosing.

And he had to admit, he could go a good long while before seeing another sheep's ass again.

In his room, he pulled open a small trunk and dug an arm underneath the cotton dresses—his mother's—on top. Near the bottom, his fingers felt something smooth and cool.

There it was.

He sat cross-legged on his cot, his back against the cool wall, and opened the book. The pages fell open to the most oft-read passage. Well, the most oft-looked-at. He had to admit that he wasn't doing much reading. Not that he couldn't. It was just—

The drawing.

Oliver's hand had put it there. Kyle recognized the lake. The horse. His own form. He held the proof in his hands. The proof that he wasn't alone in feeling whatever it was that he was feeling. It meant something—what they had. And even if he couldn't screw his courage to Oliver's sticking place and just tell him that, the drawing would always let him remember what they were.

What they were... Just two boys.

_Two boys in—_

A knock against the shutters startled him. He dropped the book in his lap and scrambled out of bed. He squinted through the gap in the wood, saw a familiar blue eye squinting back at him, then threw the shutters open.

"Oliver," he practically sighed. And condemned himself for it. So much for his own courage. Here was Oliver, coming to him in the dead of night, when Kyle had been too yellow-bellied to seek _him_ out.

"Kyle. I just wanted to—"

"Get in here already. It's cold enough to freeze a donkey's balls off." Kyle stepped back to let Oliver in. "Gotta close up them shutters practically every night now."

"I saw..." Oliver said, shoving his hands in his pockets. "I saw they'd been fixed up."

"Yeah." Kyle looked down. "Was your pa, you know. Saw the bad state they were in when he came and checked in on me, when I was laid up. Helped put the new ones up himself."

"Oh." Oliver nodded and bit down on his lower lip. "I didn't realize... I thought..."

"What?"

"Nothing."

"He's all right, your pa."

Oliver stared at him and said nothing. Kyle could read the confusion in his eyes. The anger. But he didn't know what it meant. What put it there. There was something all around different about Oliver tonight, but he couldn't quite place his finger on it.

He seemed... taller, maybe.

"How—how are you?" Oliver asked. He reached out a hand toward Kyle, but pulled it back before making contact.

Kyle squinted at him. "I'm... fine," he said. "You?"

"Is—is that—?" Oliver pointed to Kyle's cot.

Kyle swung his head around and back. "Is that what?"

"My book?" It came out as a squeak. Kyle smiled. Maybe he'd get a chance to screw his courage after all.

"From the lake? Yeah. I went back and got some of our things. Here." He grabbed a pencil from the side table. "This is yours. The tip broke off. I don't know when, but... well. Here."

Oliver took it from him. Their fingers brushed, and Kyle felt an electric current under his skin. The room seemed awfully hot all of a sudden.

"Did you—?" Oliver took a step back. "Did you read it?"

"The book? No."

He could see the relief in Oliver's shoulders.

Kyle picked up the book and turned it over in his hands a few times. "You've gotten better, though," he said, grinning.

"What do you mean?"

"At drawing."

The blush that spread across Oliver's face—up from his neck, out to his ears—was positively bewitching. Kyle took a step forward; Oliver took another step back.

"You, um, you saw that?"

"I did."

"I can explain!"

Kyle stopped his approach. "I'm listening."

"Okay," Oliver said. "I can't explain."

"What's to explain?" Kyle shrugged.

"N—nothing." Oliver's back hit the wall, stopping his retreat. Kyle closed the gap between them.

"Oliver."

"Hmm?" he said, as if he hadn't been paying attention.

"What do you want?"

"My—my book."

"Oliver."

"What?"

"You didn't know I had your book." He took another step closer. Their torsos almost touched. "But here you are. In my room." Oliver's breath was warm on his face. "What do you _want_?"

Oliver swallowed. "I want us to be good again."

"Us?"

"I—I want to be good again."

Kyle nodded. He knew what Oliver meant. "A good man, right?"

Oliver breathed out, and his whole body seemed to relax. "Yes," he said, smiling.

Kyle ran his fingers through the hair on Oliver's forearms. He looked up, right into Oliver's eyes. "You already are."

It was true. Kyle knew it. Not just because Oliver had hair on his arms, or the barest hint of fuzz on his face. Things were fundamentally different after the mountain. They had left the innocence of childhood behind. He felt new things. A new kind of energy crackling between them. A new desire.

He reached up and opened Oliver's jacket, then slipped the book into one of the inside pockets. Oliver held his breath the entire time, closing his eyes when Kyle's fingers grazed his shirted chest.

"There you go," Kyle said softly, unwilling to move away.

"Thanks," Oliver whispered.

Kyle smiled to himself, then took the smallest step back. His hand remained on Oliver's arm.

Here were two boys, no longer boys.

* * *

_(...TBC...)_


	8. Chapter 8: Birth

**Lay Me Down**

_**Chapter Eight - Birth**_

**

* * *

Lakeside Ranch, Montana Territory. 1879.****  
****Oliver Fish, age 16.

* * *

**

"Good boys do not touch themselves _down there_."

Oliver wanted to shrivel up and die the first time Salma took him aside and told him that. Could she see his thoughts? Did she know that every time he was alone in his room, all he wanted to do was... explore these new sensations?

"Bad boys who touch themselves will burn in Hell and the Devil will torment them for all of eternity."

Did she know how often he thought about the horse rides he used to take with Kyle, the two of them front to back, moving together, up and down, up and down, that warm body so close to his own...

No. She couldn't. Those thoughts were Oliver's secret shame. Unless... unless it was normal? Not sanctioned, of course, but perhaps the same temptation faced by every young man? The same temptation that needed to be fought three, four, five times a day? If Salma _knew_ to warn him against it, that must have meant he wasn't—

Wasn't defective in any way.

_Right?_

He briefly—_very_ briefly—considered asking his tutor about it. Or his father. Or Kyle.

Each idea seemed worse than the last.

It certainly didn't help matters when Salma pulled him aside one evening after supper, while his mother took tea in her room and his father was otherwise occupied in business, and warned him again, her breath like a hiss of steam in his ear, that if he gave in to those unclean feelings, he would become mad and be carted away, his brain cut into and studied. And his mother would not cry for him, because he would not be her son. He would be a dirty, unclean thing, a beast. A lunatic.

He didn't sleep that night.

All he knew was that his private parts seemed ready to explode at any moment, and if he didn't do something about it, he was bound to go crazy anyway. It was a truth he couldn't deny: His evil outcome seemed much more present—much more likely—than hers. It was such a constant problem, he wondered if he needed a physician to come and take a look at him. Figure out what was wrong. What was making his need so undeniable.

But it had been Salma, of all people, to put the idea in his head. He only he feared for his sanity when he ignored the problem; or tried to, unsuccessfully. And perhaps the physician was unnecessary. He could do a little self-examination, in the name of science. All things considered, he thought himself a bright fellow. His tutor often commented on his sharp mind. He would be able to figure out the problem on his own, with just a little light-handed investigation.

And if meant performing such a study everyday—more than once a day—he would do what was necessary. For his mental and physical well-being, of course.

_"...the Devil will torment them for all of eternity."_

But there was that frightening problem. He couldn't venture out on this... solo exploration without _some_ consultation. He would have to ask Reverend Carpenter. Though he would much rather die on the spot. Unless... unless he went straight to the source and discovered the truth on his own. As much as that frightened him, at least it was a private fear.

The family bible taunted him from its regal perch every time he walked through or past the sitting room. It lay heavy in his hands, as if each page turned by his fingers were made of stone instead of paper. He ran back through his studies, over and over again, trying to narrow down passages that would help him answer his dilemma. He kept coming back to _Leviticus 15_. A strange passage, one he wasn't sure he fully understood, but it stressed, as Salma had, the uncleanliness of man.

And then, like lightning cracking open the sky, a revelation. It happened in the afternoon. He saw Kyle leading one of the studs out of its pen, the horse's genitalia fully engorged. Kyle was having more than a bit of trouble controlling the stallion. It reared up, wild, and practically roared in frustration.

His father had explained it to him once, ages ago, when he'd been frightened by the wild sounds.

"Needs to sow his seeds," his father had said, at the time cryptically. Though it was starting to make more sense now.

He thumbed through the pages of the bible, found the relevant passage in Leviticus and read it over one more time, just to be sure.

_And if any man's seed of copulation go out from him, then he shall wash all his flesh in water, and be unclean until the evening. And every garment, and every skin, whereon is the seed of copulation, shall be washed with water, and be unclean until the evening._

Nothing about fire and brimstone. Nothing about impending madness. Only that he should wash up after.

He slammed the book shut and hopped to his feet. He was alone in the house. His mother was taking tea with some friends, his father in town.

It took mere moments to run up the stairs to his bedroom. Even less time to barricade the door and divest himself of pants.

* * *

He felt a little unclean afterward. But he felt better than he had in weeks.

* * *

Oliver entered the barn, leaving the door slightly open. The air was thick and hot, the gamey odor of livestock sticking to each breath. He hated the idea of being cooped up in there with no fresh air at all.

Still. There was nowhere else he'd rather be at the moment.

Kyle noticed his entrance with smile. Oliver hung back and watched him hook a hay bale from the stack and carry it to one of the stalls. His skin glowed as it passed under shafts of sunlight breaking through the slatted walls. Oliver couldn't help but notice how the slim muscles in his arms and shoulders flexed under the weight of the bale. He looked... he looked very grown up.

"Hi," Kyle said when the task was done, wiping bits of hay off his gloves.

Oliver cleared his throat and looked down at his feet, hiding his blush. "Brought a lesson," he said. He lifted the book he was holding. He wished he had thought to bring some water with him; he was very thirsty all of a sudden.

Kyle reached for his discarded shirt and slipped it on. It hung open at his front, unfastened, leaving his stomach and chest exposed. He reached for something else, too—a small, oddly-shaped piece of scrap wood, it looked like—and shoved it in his back pocket.

"Y'know," Kyle said, "I hope today's lesson is: Oliver gets off his lazy ass and helps Kyle out around the barn." Kyle hooked the next bale in the stack. "Because we haven't really touched on that one yet."

"History, actually," he replied with a grin, tapping the spine of the book against his temple as if he were doffing his cap.

"Great."

He knew Kyle humored him in these academic sessions of theirs. His reading skills were perfectly adequate for a person of his station. Above-average, actually. It had only taken a few months for Kyle to regain his literacy in those candlelit evenings spent together in Kyle's room. They kept on, though, moving from literature to science and history and geography. Oliver had thought, in the beginning, that it was in service of Kyle's hunger for knowledge, after having gone so long without. He'd really been forced out of school at far too young an age, Oliver thought.

It was only when he was alone in his room sometimes that he let his mind supply a different answer. That Kyle—and he—gained something entirely different from their arrangement.

While Kyle continued working, Oliver read aloud from Allen's text chronicling the Lewis and Clark expedition from the early century. He really had only picked it up because of the large map folded into the inside front cover of the first volume, full of intricately etched trails and rivers and mountain ranges. He thought he and Kyle could pour over it together, shoulder-to-shoulder, and plan adventures for their future life. Or, what he always envisioned as their future life, free of the Lakeside and all her daily demands. Some fantastical future that they could only dream of sharing. But it didn't much matter, because grand adventures or no, he knew he had a future that had Kyle in it, and that was a comforting thought. Always.

Oliver read, and Kyle kept busy, and through the first few chapters he'd ask Oliver to clarify something, or to read over a line again. He laughed at Oliver's pronunciation of Chabonah and Fort Clatsop. But eventually his interruptions lessened, his questions dried up. Oliver caught him yawning behind his fist.

"Long day," Kyle explained with an apologetic smile.

Oliver lazed on one of the already-stationed bales and kicked his feet against the side, leaning back against the wall. He didn't want to admit it, but he was bored too. The book didn't hold his interest any more than it did Kyle's. Even when Kyle had apparently finished his work and leaned against a post, chewing on a piece of straw, he hardly paid attention to Oliver.

"You gonna be in here all evening, or what?" he asked, hoping he didn't sound as petulant to Kyle's ears as he did to his own. He put down the book and rested his hands behind his head.

Kyle shrugged. "Pretty much."

Oliver pretended to peek through one of the slats. "Hiding from someone?"

"Calf duty," Kyle said, suppressing a laugh.

"Aren't they all taken care of?"

"Number sixty-seven hasn't calved yet. She's the last dam of the season. Why she's cooped up in here instead of out in the paddock with the rest of them. It's my special pleasure to wait around until she pops the little'un out."

"What about sleep?" Oliver asked.

Kyle patted one of the hay bales. "My accommodations for the night. Pretty swank, huh? Would you care to join me?"

It was said with a devil-may-care smile, but Oliver felt a quiver in his stomach, and his mouth went inexplicably dry.

"I, uh..." He didn't know what to say. Kyle hopped on the bale, then sprang back to his feet with a high-pitched _"Yow!"_ He grabbed his back side, then spun in a circle, twisting his neck over his shoulder to assess the damage. "Damn twig poked me right in the ass!" Oliver couldn't help but snicker. He looked just like a dog hunting its own tail.

Kyle stopped and scowled at him. "Your felicity at my bad luck is charming, you know that?"

"Felicity?" Sometimes Kyle made it easy for Oliver to find his voice again. "Now there's a three dollar word if I ever heard one. Why don't you go ahead and spell that for me. That'll be the end of today's lesson. I swear it." He crossed his arms over his chest, enjoying the role of professor maybe just a little too much. "That is... if you spell it right."

Kyle rolled his eyes, but he was grinning again. "Yeah, all right. I believe it starts with an _F_..."

"Of course."

"Then a _U_..."

"Um..." Oliver said. Kyle ignored him, ticking letters off his fingers.

"..._C_..._K_..._Y_..._O_..."

Before he could finish, Oliver tackled him around the waist.

He didn't know why he'd done it, what had compelled him. All he knew was that one moment, he and Kyle were paces apart, and the next they were on the ground together, limbs intertwined, rolling until Kyle landed on his back. His arms were splayed over his head and he was breathing hard. Those warm breaths, falling against Oliver's cheek. Oliver felt his head spin. Or maybe it was the room.

"What was that for?" Kyle whispered.

"Spelled it wrong," Oliver replied.

"Oh," Kyle said, feigning disappointment. He looked into Oliver's eyes. Neither one of them moved. It was if time had stopped, and they were trapped as they were, marble statues with molten centers. Oliver's heart thumped wildly against his chest.

To have Kyle so close to him, in his arms, he couldn't control himself. He felt the arousal growing in his trousers. And unless he was a fool, Kyle could feel it too.

But it didn't matter, because Kyle was looking up at him with eyes darker than the night. Hooded lids. Impossibly long eyelashes. A lock of hair stuck to his sweaty forehead. Oliver watched, almost entranced, as his own hand came up and pushed it back into place with a thumb. And he thought... maybe... _Yes._ Kyle moved his head into the touch, closed his eyes, breathed out.

_Gosh a-mighty._ There was so much heat in Oliver's belly he thought he might combust. Breathing was difficult, compounded further by the heady scent of Kyle.

Hay and earth and sweat. Pine wood and wildflowers. And something else, something he couldn't articulate. All of the things that were special to Kyle, that made Kyle different, made him beautiful...

His arms were still over his head, and Oliver had never seen another person look so open. So vulnerable. So irresistible. All of that exposed skin underneath him. He couldn't hold back. He had to reach under. To touch.

Kyle's warm stomach twitched under his finger pads. Oliver looked down, saw an intriguing—but familiar—sight, tenting Kyle's trousers. He shifted slightly to the side; they were still touching, but now he had more access...

_"Good boys do not touch themselves down there."_ He'd already dismissed that warning. But none of his research had touched upon touching someone else. This was unknown territory; but he couldn't stop himself. He wanted Kyle to feel it too, to know what it was like. His palm moved slowly, fingers hesitant at first, then stretching. He needed to feel it. He _needed_ to. He slid his hand over the stiff fabric of Kyle's pants, felt that warm, hard mass underneath. His fingers grazed it, barely touching. Afraid to touch. It was an altogether new kind of fear. He'd never experienced anything like it.

What if Kyle didn't like it? What if he was alone, totally alone, in his wants? If he really was some kind of traveling sideshow freak...

He heard Kyle suck in a deep breath. And then he arched his back. Like a cat.

"_Ollie,_" he breathed out, so quietly Oliver almost believed he'd imagined it.

Oliver touched him again, running the tips of his fingers along his inseam, and Kyle made a noise like a low, desperate hum. Oliver's eyes slammed shut; he saw stars behind his lids, popping bright like fireworks. He still couldn't breathe right.

Because he had finally admitted to himself what he'd been feeling for so long.

Never in his life had he wanted anything more than, in that moment, to kiss Kyle Lewis. To kiss _his_ Kyle.

He knew that feeling was different than the other, more primal urges. It was... romantic. It was wrong. The thought frightened him. And excited him. He couldn't stop himself. He was a captive to it. Those lips. So perfect. He longed to feel them. To taste them. To claim them.

Kyle blinked up at him, slowly, then licked his lips as if in invitation. Oliver released his held breath.

_God in heaven._ Finally. _Finally._ He thought his heart might explode from wanting. He leaned in, quickly, before his courage faltered.

_Bonk!_

Their foreheads crashed together at the same moment as their lips.

"Ow." Oliver pulled back.

Kyle bit his lip through a chuckle. But then his eyes went dark, his chest heaved with each breath, and his hands were on Oliver's vest, tugging at the buttons, pulling him down until their noses touched. Oliver angled his head this time, took in a deep breath, then let gravity take him the rest of the way down.

**

* * *

Kyle Lewis, age 16

* * *

**

Kyle wasn't sure if they were doing it right. Oliver kept pressing his lips against his, in little bird-like pecks, but he thought maybe they were supposed to do more. That their lips should open. Or move.

He'd never seen anyone kiss before. Oliver had read about it to him, through wildly blushing cheeks, in some of their lessons, but the books never went into detail. And anytime he'd been in town, he'd stayed away from those places where he'd have found out for sure.

It felt good, but it wasn't exactly what he was expecting. Oliver's lips were firm and large, and there was a nice feeling to them as they softly skimmed against his.

His fingers worked fast; Oliver's vest was all the way unbuttoned now. Kyle slid it over his shoulders and began plucking at the shirt. He wanted to be able to feel Oliver, chest-to-chest. To be as close to him as possible.

The first button slipped out of its hole just as a low moan rippled through the air.

Kyle grinned against Oliver's mouth. Moving his lips did seem to add a bit more sensation. A burst of heat sparked through him.

Another moan, this one lower. Slightly longer. Slightly more... pained.

"Are you all—?" Kyle started. But then he slammed his mouth shut and sprang to a sitting position. Oliver toppled sideways off of him, but steadied himself with an elbow.

"What's wrong?" he said, out of breath. His face was redder than Kyle had ever seen it.

"Sixty-seven," Kyle said. His mind started racing. "The dam."

"Damn?" Oliver whispered. He squinted at Kyle with confused eyes.

"C'mon. Get up!" Kyle reached out a hand to him. "I think we've got ourselves a baby to deliver."

He was right. A sac, clear with pinkish fluid, had emerged from the cow's passage. Her udder was bloated and heavy with milk. It was definitely time. He leaned in, close enough to inspect it. He heard Oliver making gagging noises behind him.

Kyle rolled up his shirtsleeves, all the way to his shoulder, in preparation. "It's just a baby, Oliver."

"It's disgusting."

"Here—come here," he said. "Touch it."

"No!" Oliver backed up, and Kyle couldn't help but laugh at him.

The sac was close to breaking. Kyle was always amazed at how soft the newborns' hooves were. He could see their sharp outline through the thin walls, ready to be released.

He blinked, then straightened. His blood suddenly ran thick and cold in his veins. Something was wrong. The hooves...

"That's not right," he said aloud.

"What?" Oliver was still behind him, crossing his arms over his stomach and shifting his weight from foot to foot. "What's going on?"

"She's backwards," Kyle said. Oliver stared at him with wide, questioning eyes. "Backwards. She can't come out that way. She needs to be head-first." His hands started shaking. He couldn't make them stop.

"Can you fix it?" Oliver's voice had gone high and tight.

Kyle jerked his head around, thoughts racing through his mind faster than he could remember them. He took a deep breath, tried to slow down. To concentrate. He could make it out to the water pump quickly enough. He just needed something...

"Your shirt!" he cried as his gaze landed on Oliver's stiff linen clothes.

"What?"

"Give me your shirt!"

"My shirt?"

"Come on, Oliver!" Kyle started bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. He couldn't wait for Oliver's clumsy fingers to get the job done, so he bounded forward and started helping, going from the bottom up while Oliver worked down. Kyle stepped behind him and dragged the shirt off his shoulders. Oliver turned, clutching at his elbows to cover his bare chest. Kyle stopped. And stared.

_Oh._ He'd—he'd filled out a little bit since Kyle had last seen him unclothed.

He swallowed. Now that he had the shirt in his hands, he needed to get to the pump, to wash his arms and scrub down with the linen. But his legs weren't moving.

"Kyle?" Oliver said, and that broke him out of his trance. "My shirt?"

"Oh." He raced through the barn doors, out to the water pump, shirt in hand, and cleaned as much dirt off of his left arm as he could manage. After the wipe-down, he dropped Oliver's damp, smudged shirt and ran back into the barn.

"Don't look," he told Oliver, then plunged his arm into the cow.

"Criminy," he heard Oliver mutter, followed by more gagging noises.

He slid his arm deeper, feeling around for the front hooves. More than likely, they had already pierced the amniotic sac. Oliver looked on the verge of puking.

"Ah!" Kyle cried out. "There you are. Come on little lady. You can do it. Just one... more... turn..."

Oliver lifted a fist to his mouth. His skin had gone an unusual shade of pale green.

Kyle maneuvered the front hooves out of the opening then retracted his goopy, blood-smudged arm. The cow moaned, and seemed to know that it was time to start pushing in earnest. A dark nose and a big tongue crowned between the legs. Kyle hung back, watching, while she struggled to get the whole head out. It was taking too long, longer than usual, and the dam seemed to be stressing.

"Grab a leg," he told Oliver, who did as he was instructed with only the slightest hesitation. "When she pushes, pull out. With all your weight. You see when she pushes?" Oliver shook his head. His eyes were large like two shiny marbles. "That's okay," Kyle said. "It's okay. Just follow my lead." And together they eased the head out. "Now, pull down, but gently. The rest should come easy."

A short while later, a slimy but fully-formed calf plopped onto the barn floor; the dam soon followed, dropping down to lie on her side with a sound that Kyle could only interpret as relief.

He marveled for a moment at the miracle they'd done, together. But only for a moment. He still had to clear the nose and mouth.

"She's breathing, right?" he asked. Oliver knelt next to him, his chest rocking with quick inhalations of breath. He stared at the calf like he'd never seen anything like it in his entire life. "Oliver?"

"I can't..." His adam's apple bobbed in his throat. "I can't believe you did that."

Kyle smiled. "_We_ did it. And we're not done. Help me take her to the mom. She needs to clean her. Moms go nuts for that stuff." Oliver made a face like he was just told he needed to do the cleaning himself. "You know," Kyle said, "You probably should get used to this sort of thing. You never know when I won't be around to help." If possible, Oliver looked even more distressed.

They hefted the baby together, Oliver wincing and grimacing the whole time, as if it physically pained him to touch the wet animal. When she was finally situated with her mother, Oliver dropped down onto his back and rested the back of his arm against his forehead.

Kyle flopped down next to him on the hay, breathing hard.

"That was—"

"Amazing," Oliver finished.

"Yeah."

Acting on a sudden whim, Kyle rolled on top of Oliver, grabbed his cheeks with slippery hands, and laid a very hard and very loud kiss on the bridge of his nose, right between his eyes.

"Oh, eww!" Oliver pushed him off, then tried to wipe the goo off his cheeks, albeit unsuccessfully. "Uck uck uck!" Kyle lay on his back and watched him, laughter pouring out of him that he couldn't hold back. He felt warm all over. Warm and tired and proud and happy.

Oliver eventually gave up cleaning his face and dropped his hands with a pathetic whimper. Kyle took pity on him, unrolled his shirt sleeve, and, stretching it over his palm, started dabbing at Oliver's cheeks.

"There. All better."

Oliver's eyes glared at him, but his mouth was curled up into a crescent, betraying his amusement.

"Thank you," Kyle whispered.

"For what?"

"For being here."

Oliver smiled full-on then.

"We should name her," he said.

Kyle squinted at him. "What?"

"The calf. Just thought, you know... We could give her a name. Together."

"I dunno. Naming animals? I just don't see the point in it."

"But what about—?" Oliver cut himself off. "Nothing. Nevermind. I'm sorry."

Kyle took a deep breath and released it. They were venturing into forbidden territory. The one thing they never spoke of. But maybe it was time. He had to let Oliver know that it was okay... That _he_ was sorry.

"It's all right, Oliver. You can talk about her. About Jinny." Kyle's throat caught on the name, but he pushed through. "She was different. Special, you know?"

"Yeah. I know. Kyle, I'm really sorry about that. You know that, right?"

"Don't—"

"I'll never forgive myself."

"Oliver. You don't have to. It's—" _It's my fault,_ he wanted to say, but couldn't. "It's in the past," he said instead. He nodded his head toward the cow. "Look at her go. She loves cleaning that gunk off."

"Is that—?" Oliver squinted at the calf. "Look at that mark on its head. It looks like... don't you think it looks like a mountain range? Like in the map! In the book. The adventure..."

"I... guess so," Kyle said, not exactly sure what Oliver was talking about.

"Let's name her after the mountains!" He sat up and thrust an animated finger in the air.

Kyle couldn't help but laugh. Oliver's eyes were bright with excitement, still running high on adrenaline.

"Li'l Rocky? Beaverhead?" Kyle offered, caught up in the moment. "Sierra Nevada?"

"A-ha! Someone's been paying attention during his geography lessons," Oliver teased.

"Shut up," Kyle said, pushing him onto his back. He nestled into Oliver's side and rested his head on Oliver's shoulder. Oliver let him, curling his arm around Kyle's lower back to keep him there, and they lay that way for a while, talking in whispers, laughing and reliving their own adventure in animal husbandry.

Kyle looked up after a bit and saw something strange. _Was that...?_ Yes. Oliver's white linen shirt, lying just inside the open barn door. He thought for sure he'd left it out by the water pump...

It didn't matter though. Oliver was warm underneath him, and his eyes so soft.

* * *

_(...TBC...)_


	9. Chapter 9: The Star

**Lay Me Down**

_**Chapter Nine - The Star**_

**

* * *

Lakeside Ranch, Montana Territory. 1879.****  
****Kyle Lewis, age 16.

* * *

**

"Ey-a!"

Kyle stopped his mallet mid-swing and looked up. A man on horseback trotted up to him on the opposite side of the fence—a split-rail he was building around the perimeter of the grazing fields.

"Yeah?" he asked.

"You with the Fishes?"

Kyle wiped his brow with his shirtsleeve and nodded. It was a warm day, the air heavy and damp with humidity.

"And a Mr. R. Lewis?" the man asked.

"Yessir."

"Letters." The messenger rifled through his leather satchel and tossed over a handful of mail. Kyle caught them against his chest with one arm, dropped his mallet, and poked through the stack. Three for the Fishes. A normal haul. The one that caught his attention—and planted a seed of curiosity in him—was a folded letter on sky blue paper. Brown ink curled into thin, clean lines addressed the mail to his father. Kyle flipped it over and squinted at the tiny lettering in the red wax seal.

He thought he could make out the words _Tabernacle_ and _Joy_. Which didn't mean a darned thing to him.

"Storm's coming," the man said before he flicked the reins and trotted off.

Kyle looked up at the sky. A shadow of gray clouds hung over the tops of distant mountains. He tucked the mallet under his arm by the handle and started jogging back to the main house. There really was no rush to get there; the storm was a ways off and the mail could wait the extra ten minutes it would take him to walk. It was just... he usually didn't get a chance to go by the main house during the day. Or ever, really. And that's where Oliver was likely to be.

He thought about the night before. About the barn. The birth, and Oliver's arms curled around him. He wished he hadn't fallen asleep so soon after they had delivered the calf, but he'd been working since sun-up, and the birth had taken the last of his energy. He'd woken sometime in the night and reached out a sleepy arm, only to come up with a handful of cold hay. Oliver had gone. Back to the house, to his room. The one place Kyle couldn't follow. But he knew Oliver couldn't be caught out of the house too late at night. He knew what Mr. Fish was capable of.

He popped into his own front door and left his father's letter on table. He was still curious about it, but it could wait.

At the main house, he took the porch stairs two at a time, then hesitated at the front door. He'd never been so close to it before. He ran a finger down one of the grooves. It was sanded smooth, silky as a feather. He'd been trying to get one of his own carvings that soft, but his tools were old and worn and inefficient.

"Salma?" he said in a hushed voice through the door. "Salma? You here? Got the mail."

He thought about leaving the letters on the porch. It's what the messenger would have done. But what if the wind came through? He looked out toward the horizon. Those dark clouds still hovered over the pale gray mountains. The storm could come in and wash the letters clear away.

He laid his hand flat against the door and pushed. It slowly creaked open.

"Hello? Anyone home?" He took a slow step inside. "Oliver?"

No answer, aside from the swing of the door as it closed behind him.

The house was smaller on the inside than it looked from the outside. He'd always imagined it as spacious—palatial, even. Maybe it was just from the way Mrs. Fish used to dress Oliver as a boy, in all his fine clothes. Almost as if he had been a little prince in his shiny boots and clean, long socks, his pressed pants and vests with smooth, ivory buttons that glinted in the sunlight. Kyle would look down at his own dirty shirts and wonder what kind of spell kept Oliver's so crisp and white.

But this house was no prince's castle. A thin layer of dust sat atop plain wooden furniture—dull and unpolished, like his own. Perhaps he and Oliver were not so very different after all...

He heard footsteps on the porch through a sudden gale of wind. Kyle darted into the kitchen. There was a servants' entrance there. He could sneak out of the house unnoticed.

But something kept him where he was. A vision of Oliver, entering the house with a book tucked under his arm, his round cheeks pink from walking. Kyle smiled to himself. He missed Oliver like breathing, though he'd just seen him the night before.

But the smile quickly vanished as a second pair of footsteps hit the porch, stringing a weight of lead around his ankles, stopping him in his tracks. Stopping even the beat of his heart for a moment as he heard the trilling, birdsong voice of Mrs. Fish.

"Please, George," she said. "This is important."

Kyle felt his blood freeze. Mr. and Mrs. Fish. If they caught him in the main house without permission... He wondered how quietly he could sneak to the servants' entrance.

"The last time you brought 'important' matters to my attention, my dear, I wasted an afternoon on the latest hat styles sweeping New York City."

"It's about Oliver!" Mrs. Fish cried. Kyle froze in place, the servants' entrance entirely forgotten.

"Is he hurt?"

"No."

"Then I don't see—"

"I fear for him, George." She sounded on the verge of tears. "For his eternal soul."

Kyle remembered those words. From the Bible. They made him shiver.

George sighed. "Whatever this is about, Barb, I don't have time for it."

"He's... he's in trouble, George. I saw him—" She stopped. Silence crowded all the corners of the house, thick and uncomfortable.

"You saw him what?" George spoke each word slowly and deliberately.

"It... it doesn't matter."

"That's what I've been saying," he said softly.

"Please, George, you have to help me save him."

"He goes to church. I see him reading scripture. What else do you want me to do? Call the priest out for an exorcism?"

"If you think that will help..."

George sighed again. Kyle peeked through the crack in the door and saw George rub Barbara's shoulders comfortingly.

"What's really going on here, Barb? What aren't you telling me?"

Barbara fell into his arms and sobbed.

"George! Oh, George!" she cried. "We have to save him from that boy!"

"That boy? Lewis's boy? What's he done now?"

"He's a devilish creature," she spat out. "Salma always said he had the demon in him. I didn't believe her. I didn't. But now—I see it, George. I've _seen_ it."

"Seen _what_?"

Kyle had a sudden vision in his head. Oliver's shirt, lying inside the barn door. Moved from where he had dropped it. _She saw._

"The whole family..." Barbara muttered against her husband's chest. "Cursed. Cursed by the devil. And the mother—!"

Kyle's fists clenched. If she dared insult his ma...

He heard the sound of paper crunching. The unopened letters were still in his hand, now crushed under his fist.

"They said she was a—" Her voice lowered to a whisper, but Kyle could still hear her. "—a mixed race. Oriental or something."

"You're being ridiculous. Oliver's wet nurse was a Mexican, for God's sake."

"That's probably why she died so young," Barbara said, ignoring the interruption. "Don't they say the mixed breeds are more prone to fever?"

Kyle couldn't stop himself from shaking. His blood ran hot all through him.

"Barb," George said, running a palm gently along the back of her head. "Oliver's not a boy anymore. And I'm not his jail warden."

Barbara pulled back, but her fingers still dug into his shoulders with a talon-like grip. "Send them away."

"What?"

"The boy and his father. Send them away."

"And why would I go and do that?"

"Because I asked you to," she said. "It's not as if they're irreplaceable."

George sighed again. "You think help comes that cheap around here? You don't know how lucky we are. The father works for bourbon and the boy for pennies. Less than that since he relinquished his wages to me." He shook his head. "I can't afford to let them go, Barb, demons or no."

Barbara's face crumpled like the letters in Kyle's hand. Tears streamed down her reddened cheeks.

A loud clap of thunder shook the walls of the house. It shook Barbara, too, and seemed to throw a sudden change over her. But it wasn't fear. She straightened her shoulders and removed a handkerchief from George's shirt pocket with her small tapered fingers, then dabbed the tears away from her cheeks. She folded the handkerchief neatly back into his pocket and stared into his eyes.

"Then Oliver must go," she said in a low, steady voice. "College. In the east. It'll cost less than his tutors." She smoothed down the front of her skirt in short, brisk strokes and looked up at George as if she had just asked him to fetch her an egg from the basket.

Kyle swallowed. And swallowed again. His throat had gone drier than dust. He closed his mouth. He was breathing too loudly. They'd hear him. They'd find him. He had to go. Another boom of thunder rocked the sky, he let the letters drop from his fist, and he was across the kitchen and out the door. His legs moved without command, running, running faster than he'd ever run before.

Rain pelted down on him from a blackened sky, but he barely noticed. All he could think about was getting home, getting to his room, pulling open his trunk and being with his things. With their things. Sitting on the bed that they'd sat on together. Running his fingers along the spines of Oliver's books, the ones he was able to leave with Kyle as gifts. Tokens of their friendship. And the drawing. The ranch they were going to have together, the life they were going to live together. Someday.

He needed those things. They gave him hope, even as the truth set in. _Oliver's going away._ Oliver would leave and Kyle would be alone. Totally alone. Again.

He paced his room in short, frantic steps. What to do? What to _do?_

They could go someplace. Run away together. Kyle could get a ranch job, one with actual wages, and Oliver... well, Oliver was pretty smart. That had to count for something. He could teach. He'd done a pretty good job of it with him, he thought.

Yes. They could do it. It wouldn't be much more than a meager living, but Kyle was used to that. He could show Oliver how to live on nothing.

His hands fidgeted. He grabbed the closest thing to him on the desk, just to have something to hold. To steady his trembling fingers.

It was the star. The wooden sheriff's star he'd been carving for Oliver. It was nearly done.

He ran a finger along the six points, testing the smoothness of each edge. Not quite as perfect as he wanted them to be. The top of the star was slightly shorter than the rest, and the wood had chipped on a few of the circular endpoints. And it was still so dull. Kyle imagined a gold one, polished and blemish-free, pinned to Oliver's shirt pocket. How happy that would make his friend. How large and bright and true his smile would be.

A sudden realization dawned on him.

Oliver had a chance now. He could get away from the ranch. Get out from under the thumb of his parents. College could lead him to the man he wanted to be. The man he was supposed to be. And who was Kyle to get in the way of that?

He was nobody. A drunkard's son from a questionable lineage. Just like Mrs. Fish had said. Oliver was meant for greater things. Kyle believed that.

He knew Oliver's dreams, and not a one of them included living like paupers in some strange country.

Kyle sighed, and resignation sank into his chest. Oliver was better off in college, far away from this place that was like a locked wooden cage surrounded by nothing on all sides.

* * *

"_Psst!_" Kyle gripped his legs tighter around the wet tree limb. One of the smaller branches dug into his thigh, but he wasn't sure enough of his grip to move even an inch. "_Oliver!_" he whispered, hoping his voice could be heard over the steadily falling rain.

Getting up the tree had been easier than he expected, but now that he was there, hugging one of the thick, outlying branches with his arms and legs, he didn't quite know what to do. Oliver's second story room was directly across from him, the shutters open and knocking against the side of the house in the storm. Stupid to leave them open in this weather, but Kyle wouldn't gripe about it, not when it meant getting the chance to see him.

If he was even in there. More rain fell on Kyle, soaking his clothes, and he started to feel as if maybe this wasn't the cleverest idea he'd ever had. But sitting around in his room doing nothing just wasn't cutting it. He had to get out of there, to find Oliver, to tell him—

To tell him what he didn't know if he _should_ tell him.

_"Oliver!"_ he whispered again, louder this time.

Oliver's head poked out of the window and his eyes went wide with surprise. "Kyle?"

"Hey," Kyle said, a bit sheepishly.

"What are you doing out there?"

"Climbing your tree," Kyle joked. Oliver didn't laugh. "I had to see you," Kyle said. A sudden sense of hopelessness and longing washed over him, and it was as cold as the rain seeping through his shirt.

Oliver leaned out the window. Raindrops hit his hair then slid down his face. "They're sending me away."

"I know." Kyle paused, not sure what to say next. "It's because of me."

"I know," Oliver said.

God. Kyle felt like crying. His fingers slipped on the wet branch. Oliver reached out a hand—though he was too far away to do anything.

"You should get down from there, Kyle."

But Kyle wasn't going to let a little nothing of a feeling like guilt distract him from the mission at hand. He set his jaw and steeled his shoulders. "Move aside, Oliver."

"What?"

"Move aside. I'm coming in."

He let go of the branch and stood very slowly. The tree limb wobbled underneath him.

"Kyle—!"

"I got this," he said, more to himself than Oliver. The ground looked much farther away now than it had when he'd been on his stomach. He swallowed, then held his arms out to the side to steady himself. The rain kept pushing his hair over his eyes, but he didn't dare lift an arm to brush it out of the way. With a deep breath, he leapt to the windowsill. His body slammed against the side of the house painfully, but his elbows were over the sill. Instinct kicked in and his arms locked, keeping him from plummeting. He scrambled up, bouncing his toes softly against the wood.

"A little help?" he managed through a clenched jaw.

Oliver rushed over, grabbed him under the arms, and pulled. With maybe just a little too much force, as Kyle's full weight came up and over. Their chests crashed together and they toppled awkwardly—and noisily—to the floor.

"Shh!" Kyle said. Oliver lay still underneath him, his eyes wide and black. Kyle thought he could feel the soft thump of Oliver's heart tripping, and it sent a quiver through his own chest. He breathed deep, but it didn't settle a thing.

There they were again. Lying on the ground, one atop the other. Just like in the barn.

It was the wrong time. Definitely the wrong place. But Kyle didn't know if he could stop himself. He'd been thinking about Oliver nonstop. All he wanted to do was kiss him. All the time.

But he held himself back, somehow. He couldn't chance it. Not when he didn't know what Mrs. Fish had told her son. Not when he didn't know if he'd ever see Oliver again. Not when it could ruin everything.

Still, those warm breaths on his lips... All he had to do was lean down and capture them...

"Get off!" Oliver whispered, shoving him by the shoulders.

"What the—?" All the air deflated from Kyle's chest as his back hit the floor and a silent curse ripped through him. He _knew_ it was a mistake. His stupid, foolish heart!

Oliver hopped to his feet. "I hear something. Someone's coming."

Kyle scrambled up, turning in circles, desperate to find a hiding place. His eyes narrowed in on the bed.

"Okay," he breathed out. "Just act normal, Oliver."

"Normal?"

"Calm, you know? Like there's nothing strange afoot."

Oliver bit his lip and nodded. His eyes looked very far away. "Yeah. Okay."

"Okay?"

"Mm hmm."

Kyle slapped him on the shoulder in support, then quickly slid under the bed, tucked his hands under his chin, and watched Oliver's booted feet step toward the door.

There was a polite knock and then a soft voice came through the door. "Oliver?" It was Mrs. Fish. "Oliver, sweetie?"

"Yeah, Ma?" His voice trembled slightly.

"May I come in?"

Kyle held his breath and remained as still as a silo. The door creaked open slowly.

"What is it, Ma?"

"The storm. It's getting cold out. I brought you an extra quilt."

Silence held the room in its grasp. "Oh. Okay," Oliver finally said. "Thank you."

"Shall I put in on the b—"

"No!" Oliver squeaked. Kyle slammed his eyes shut in frustration. So much for calm and normal. But Oliver quickly recovered. "I can do it," he said. "I'm not helpless. I need to learn how to take care of myself, you know. At college."

"Oh," Barbara cried. "I'm going to miss you, my sweet little Oliver! My little boy!"

Kyle rolled his eyes. This coming from the woman who so coldly decided to send him away in the first place.

"I'll miss you too, Ma," Oliver said. His voice was muffled, as if his face were being pressed against fabric. "Ma?" he said. "Ma? Can you... can you let go now?"

Kyle heard her sniffle. Her skirts rustled and her small booted feet clacked against the wooden floorboards as she backed away.

"Goodnight, Ma."

"I love you, Oliver."

"Love you, too," Oliver said, and then the door closed. Kyle waited a few moments, just to be sure. He heard the quilt fall on the mattress above him. "Kyle?" Oliver whispered. He sounded unsure, as if Kyle had magically escaped the room while no one was looking.

Kyle grinned to himself. "Is it safe to come out now, sweet little Oliver?"

"Quiet you," Oliver said, laughing. Kyle crawled out and stood before Oliver. He looked paler than before, and tired. But he was relaxed, and seemed comfortable in Kyle's company.

Kyle pushed a length of wet hair off of his face that had fallen over his eyes during the fall and subsequent scramble to hide. He was surprised when Oliver reached forward and tucked a stray, damp lock behind his ear, too.

"You need a haircut," he said with a very serious expression, as if it were the most important thing in the world.

Kyle just tilted his head and stared at him. Oliver pulled his hand back and nervously tapped a balled fist against his leg. His cheeks bloomed red and he looked down at the floor, embarrassed. Kyle wanted to lift up his chin and tell him that everything was all right, that everything was going to _be_ all right.

"When are you leaving?" Kyle asked instead, keeping his hands to himself.

"Tomorrow morning."

"What? So soon?"

"Father's in town now. He's sending a wire to my mother's relatives in Michigan. I'm staying with them until everything's settled with the school. The train leaves in the morning. They're both coming with me, to send me off. My parents. And Salma, too." Oliver looked at him with an apology in his eyes. It was a clear, unspoken message. _You can't come. You can't say goodbye. I'm sorry._

So Kyle did the only thing he could think of. He stepped close, leaned in, and pressed his lips against Oliver's cheek, then he angled his face up, dragging it softly along Oliver's slightly fuzzy skin, and laid another gentle kiss on Oliver's temple, then another on his forehead. It felt different than how they'd been together in the barn. This was reverential, almost pious—Oliver the altar to Kyle's worshipful touch. He rested his forehead softly against Oliver's and took in his presence. The crinkle of his kind eyes, his smell, the way his body was so warm and magnetic, always drawing Kyle closer and closer, but never close enough.

Oliver's hands came up and cupped Kyle's face. They were so large, those pugilist's hands of his Kyle had always been so enthralled with. They were big enough to cover almost the whole of his head. Kyle felt safe in those hands. Protected.

He closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath when he felt Oliver's own lips against his forehead.

There was no better moment. He had to tell Oliver how he felt.

"Oliver, I—"

He'd only ever said it a handful of times, and only to his family—years ago, when Rebecca and his mother were still with them. He hadn't ever felt that way about anyone else. But now?

Now, Oliver _was_ his family.

"Kyle?" Oliver stared at him with those cotton-soft eyes.

_Say it, you fool._

"I..." He felt it in his bones, in every inch of his body. He felt it so strongly. "I..."

But he couldn't say it. "I'll write to you," he said quickly. "While you're away."

Oliver smiled a sad, fleeting smile.

"And I'll cut my hair," Kyle added. It did the trick, turning that sad smile into a real belly laugh that sent vibrations all the way up to where their foreheads touched.

"Don't," Oliver said through his laughter. "Don't change a thing. Promise me?"

"Yeah." Kyle sobered. "I promise."

He pulled back and noticed a line of wetness streaking Oliver's cheek to his chin. He didn't know if it was rain or tears, but it didn't matter. He thumbed it away, rubbing Oliver's cheek a few extra times, just to make sure it was clean and he hadn't left any smudges.

He wiped his hand on the back of his pants and felt something in his rear pocket.

"Oh, I forgot," he said suddenly. "I, uh, I made this for you." He pulled out the wooden sheriff's star and thrust it clumsily at Oliver.

Oliver's eyes widened and he opened his mouth to say something... but nothing came out. He dropped his head and kicked the toe of his shoe against the floor. Kyle grabbed Oliver's hand and folded it around the star. He stayed there, his hand covering Oliver's for a few silent moments. He didn't know what to say. How to say goodbye. Just the thought of it made his throat ache.

"Here." He took the star from Oliver's hand and tucked it into his front pocket instead. "Keep it here, close to your heart."

Oliver nodded, but still didn't say anything. Kyle couldn't read his face, couldn't tell if Oliver was touched or confused or sad or maybe all three all mixed together. Maybe he didn't have anything to say. Maybe they didn't need to say anything else at all.

Kyle turned and slung one knee over the window, then gauged the distance to the ground. If he hung from the ledge, then dropped straight down, it wouldn't be too hard of a fall. He looked up at Oliver one last time. "Don't forget who you are and your dreams, okay?"

Oliver kept nodding, and then Kyle was out the window. His feet hit the ground and he was running again. Always running.

* * *

He threw off his rain-soaked jacket and went to the kitchen to find matches. His body shivered all over, but he could warm himself by candlelight. _Oliver's candles..._

His father sat at the table. His eyes were red-rimmed and wet, his mouth slack, his hair a shambles, as if he'd dragged his hands through it for hours. There was a jug by his elbow, but no cup.

"Pa?" Kyle said, taking a cautious step forward. "What's wrong?"

"Jin," he mumbled to the tabletop. His face was ashy and pale. "Your mother..."

Kyle sighed. Drunk again. Which wasn't a surprise. He lifted the half-empty jug of bourbon, provided of course by George Fish, and contemplated joining his father in drunkenness for the evening.

"Weeping in her grave now..." his pa muttered. "...weeping for your sister."

That was when Kyle noticed the opened letter on the table. Light blue paper, brown ink, red wax seal.

"Rebecca?" He lunged for the letter. "No."

_No. No no no no no._

He skimmed it as fast as he could. There was a block in his brain. He read the words, but he barely understood them.

_"Tabernacle of Joy..._

_... convent... Sister Rebecca..."_

Kyle fell into a chair, his body rigid, icy cold. Completely numb.

_"... run away... dangerous man..."_

The letter slipped from his fingers and hit the floor.

_"God forgive her wicked soul."_

* * *

(...TBC...)


	10. Chapter 10: Seven Circles

**Lay Me Down**

_**Chapter Ten - Seven Circles**_

* * *

**Ypsilanti School for Boys, Michigan. 1880.  
Oliver Fish, age 17.**

* * *

Oliver dreamed violent dreams.

Most nights it was the same—cows being led to slaughter. One by one in a single file. He could hear their high-pitched screams. Powerful waves of blood rushed out of their slit throats and knocked Oliver over. Some nights he drowned in their blood.

And sometimes Kyle was there. He stood with the cows, urging them forward. But to Oliver it looked as if he were among them, waiting his turn in line. When Oliver called out to him, Kyle turned and his eyes were full black. A large arm came down with a whip. Oliver tried to yell, to tell Kyle to watch out, but his mouth was full of paper, cutting the roof. He couldn't speak. He could only watch with horror as everything around him soaked through with red.

He woke those mornings in a cold sweat. His roommate Conrad watched him warily, as if Oliver could snap at any moment.

"Night terrors?" he asked.

"No," Oliver said as he roughly tugged on his boots, hating how defensive and unconvincing he sounded.

* * *

The first thing he learned at school was just how lonely it could be. He missed his parents. He missed his bed. He missed Salma's secret recipe for huevos rancheros. Sometimes he would sit for hours at night with the small wooden star in his hands and his chest would hurt with missing home.

"You gotta quit moping around," Conrad said one afternoon. He slung an exasperated arm over Oliver's shoulders. Oliver wanted to shrug him off, but didn't. "Go outside. Join a club. Anything to get that sad sack look offa your face."

So he joined the marksmanship club, and found he was actually almost good at it. Archery, rifles, pistols. He had a natural marksman's eye, or so the club leader said. Oliver accepted the praise with a side serving of fraudulence; he never confessed the countless hours he spent by himself in the fields practicing. Always practicing, always alone. Always trying to think about anything else besides his loneliness.

But it felt good knowing there was someplace at school for him to fit in. Someplace where he was good at something and people respected him. But even as his confidence began to bloom, there was still something... missing. He would take a deep breath and let accomplishment and strength fill his chest, more than he had ever felt in his life, but there was always just the tiniest gap, an empty slit that set him off balance and niggled at the back of his mind.

It didn't take him very long to put words to that empty feeling.

_I wish _**_he_**_ were here._

* * *

"Name?"

"Fish."

"Here you go, son. Three today."

Oliver grabbed the letters from the clerk with greedy hands and quickly scanned them. He recognized his mother's handwriting on one. The other two were nearly illegible. He wondered for a moment how they had ever reached their final destination, but that thought was replaced almost immediately with a very warm, very palpable feeling of joy. As it always was.

Letters from Kyle. Right on schedule.

The letters came frequently. Always two letters, always twice a week, each one dated two days apart. Oliver made it a point to answer them all. He addressed them to Mr. Lewis, as Kyle had instructed him. Kyle never said how he was able to procure Oliver's address at the school, but Oliver could easily assume it involved some sort of sneakery. Quick as a fox, Kyle was.

Oliver hustled to his room—careful not to rush too fast, lest he drew unwanted attention to himself—and plonked down on his bed, ripping open the wax seals and placing the letters on his folded knees. He read his mother's first, out of respect. It contained the same prettily-worded long list of nothings as before. She loved him, she hoped he was making friends, she missed him, she was proud of him. He'd write a short message for her later, assuring her that all was well and that he was keeping himself out of trouble.

But, for the time being, he had more important things to do.

He took a deep breath as he crisped up the creases in the first letter. It was always a challenge, keeping his eyes from scanning quickly over the whole of letter, spoiling later paragraphs without giving full attention to the ones that came before. He wanted to savor every sentence, every hastily scribbled word.

_Dear Oliver,_

_I hope this letter finds you well._

Kyle always began his letters the same. It warmed Oliver's heart.

_Things are ever the same here, save your presence on the ranch, which makes the sun shine a little less brightly on land and tree, I surely think._

_I am reading again, the book you first gave me, the adventure story. I think of you, and I think you are having adventures out there in the world, and I am glad. I try to find as many as I can here. You're probably wondering what made me think of that. I'll tell you. I went with your pa and Mr. Hudson King to town. They got up to business, whereas I got up to drink. It was there at Gannon's where I got to talking with a stranger..._

Oliver tensed, though he wasn't quite sure why.

_He was just traveling through, visiting old friends. Said he used to live here, a while back. Name's Bill Douglas, but you'll like this. I overheard some of the ladies in the saloon call him "Availa-Bill" because he hasn't taken a wife yet. You should have seen them preening. Gave me quite the chuckle, especially seeing as how he didn't seem a mite's length interested in them. While he was waiting on one of his friends, one of the Buchanan-Riley boys, he came and sat by me at the bar. We shared a few drinks and started talking._

Now Oliver's jaw really started to clench. He didn't think he liked the idea of Kyle drinking with this stranger. Especially if they were at Gannon's place, with all the hanky-panky that went on there.

_I asked if he knew your folks. He didn't, but he listened anyways as I went on and on about working for them and about you and school and all manner of things. Sometimes I just miss you so much I can't seem to keep my mouth shut. He didn't seem to mind, though. I'm sure he thought it all highly amusing._

I'll just bet he did, Oliver thought to himself with an involuntary sneer.

_I don't remember how it came up really (we'd had a bit to drink by that point), but he was telling me about this place, this perfect place. Lagos de la Serenidad. That's the name of the town. Down south, in Mexico. He was pretty convinced it was the place for me. He'd just come from there, actually. I don't know whichways if I believe him, but he said he helped build the whole town with a few partners. I think he was just trying to sell me something, as if I could afford anything, but I don't know. The way he described it? It reminded me of..._

_It reminded me of us. Of adventures and of swimming at the lake. The ranch you said we'd have together. _

_Now I'm just talking foolish. You probably don't even remember that, it was so long back. And with your mind all full of books and everything... It's nothing. Just a dream, I guess._

_Yours always,__  
__—K_

Oliver read the last few lines over again and felt that empty feeling return. There was so much he wanted out of life, but he wasn't sure if he'd ever have it. If he was allowed to have it. To take it. Sitting in this hushed, wallpapered room, far away from everything he'd ever known, his own life felt far away and fuzzy, like trying to remember the last fragments of a dream before waking.

What was he even doing here? And why was he so alone?

* * *

**Oliver Fish, age 18.**

* * *

Oliver approached the mail clerk's desk with raised eyebrows, but the clerk, used to his now-daily visits, shook his head and gave him a rueful smile.

"Nothing today."

His heart sunk. "Oh. All right. Thank you."

He walked back through campus with his hands in his pockets. Eight days, and no letter from Kyle. Day four had brought disappointment, day six anger. Day eight was worry. What if something terrible had happened? What if the ministers had found him and enacted their revenge?

A tight ball formed in Oliver's stomach and stayed their all day, through supper, and dinner, and evening prayer. He tossed and turned all night. Images, horrible, blood-soaked images, snapshots of slaughter from dreams of old, plagued his mind.

Something terrible had happened—he just knew it—and no one had told him.

* * *

Oliver was dead tired, dark circles under his eyes from too many sleepless nights, when a letter finally came.

The scribbled handwriting was even more haphazard than usual, but it was still one of the most beautiful sights Oliver had ever seen.

Kyle was okay. Oliver could breathe again.

He didn't even bother waiting until he was in his room to rip open the seal and find out what exactly he'd been missing out on at home. He sat on an outdoor bench in the green park and held his breath.

_Dear Oliver,_

_I hope this letter finds you well._

Oliver smiled.

_I'm sorry that I could not write to you no sooner. It has been a difficult time here, what with the funeral and all._

Funeral? Oliver's eyes widened and his heart sped up in his chest. Who had died? Why had no one told him?

_Pa has passed on. He'd been suffering for years, you know, and with all the drink and the sadness... maybe his eternal rest is something of a blessing, but I still miss him. It's not like we was close, or spoke all that much, you know, being as busy and tired as he and I always was. I think I've spoken to him now more in prayer than ever we done in life when he were still here. But that don't mean things aren't different around here. I came in from the fields the other evening and his chair were empty and cold, and my heart felt the same way. We weren't close, he and I, not like you and your loving folks, but he were always HERE. No matter what, I weren't never alone._

Oliver had to pause and breathe deep; his chest hurt with a heavy weight and his eyes stung.

Kyle's handwriting was almost indecipherable in places, and he hadn't used such uneducated verbage in years. Something about that broke Oliver's heart a little bit, like Kyle was that lonely little boy again who didn't have anything but work and sleep.

_I couldn't afford no funeral or anything nice for him. Was gonna put him in a box in the ground in Beggars' Lot, with all them other unnamed souls. But God bless your pa, Oliver Fish. God Bless him, he offered to put him in the nice stone church field, where they done buried Ma all them years ago. There weren't no plot on her row for him, but he ain't much more than a few rows back and some twenty yards from her dearly departed soul, which I know he'd be grateful for. As am I. _

_It was a real nice service. Your pa were there, and Hector and Salma too. The priest made all his blessings, and I know it were all done right, in the proper way, so that his soul were ferried off to be with the heavenly creatures._

_Rebecca weren't able to come._

Oliver flipped the page over, expecting to find more, but that was it. The end of the letter. Kyle hadn't even signed his name. Oliver stared into the park's cold, grey distance, unfocused and unsettled. It was a particularly frigid day in late autumn. Most of the trees had already lost their leaves and were barren, brown spindly ghosts of their former beauty.

He thought about Rowland Lewis. Tried to find some hidden memory of the man, but he couldn't locate a single one.

He realized then that he didn't know much about Kyle's life outside of the bounds of their friendship. To him, Kyle's whole existence only consisted of horse riding lessons and reading by candlelight.

There was a whole other world for Kyle that was now missing a central piece. Kyle was all alone and Oliver wished more than ever that things were different. That the whole world was different. That his life and Kyle's could travel the same path.

But it would never be. They were like Rowland and Jinnifer in death. A few rows back and twenty yards apart, forever.

* * *

"You look like misery's first cousin," Conrad said as he shoveled a spoonful of beans into his mouth.

"I'm fine," Oliver said. He pushed a pile of potatoes around his plate with his fork.

"If you say so."

Oliver stared absently around the commissary, feeling even more disconnected from this place than usual. The other boys at tables surrounding him laughed and chatted and chewed and looked perfectly content with themselves.

Oliver stopped chewing suddenly—in fact he almost choked—when he saw a familiar shade of dark brown hair on a boy with a slight build and graceful hands.

For half a moment his heart leapt into his throat and he almost called out, "Kyle!" But then his eyes focused and his wild ideas stuttered to a stop and he realized that he had been mistaken. The other boy slightly resembled his best friend, but Oliver's eyes had only been playing tricks on him.

"Who's that?" he asked Conrad, once his throat had been cleared of all choking hazards.

"Him? Oh, he's new. Louis Hastings."

"He looks... lonely," Oliver said. And he knew a thing or two about that. "Maybe we should ask him to join us?"

Conrad frowned at him, then shook his head. "You don't want to do that, Fish."

"Why not?" Oliver hated the idea of someone being so alone.

Conrad's eyes darkened. "I've just heard things. You don't want anything to do with him or his type."

"His type?" Oliver swallowed hard. There was something sharp-edged and sinister in Conrad's voice.

"There's a... queerness about him. They say he isn't... right. You don't want to have anything to do with him," Conrad repeated. "He isn't right."

Oliver didn't know what to say to that, so he said nothing. He pushed his potatoes around his tray some more and felt a heaviness in his chest that wouldn't soon leave him.

* * *

**Oliver Fish, age 19.**

* * *

Sometimes Oliver wondered just how bad his Italian really was. His brain seemed to be losing a lot of his readings' original intent in translation. He certainly didn't find _The Divine Comedy_to be all that comedic. In fact, it sent the same cold shiver down his neck as when he first learned about Hell from the Bible.

Fire and brimstone and punishment and pain.

But before it had merely been an abstract concept. Something vague and awful to fear.

Getting into the excruciating detail of The Inferno was an altogether more visceral experience.

He found himself drawn—against his will, like the stock in his dreams—to the last two circles in particular. The seventh circle. A place for those who break nature's law. Where all burned the unlucky souls of Sodom and Gomorrah. Then there was the eighth circle. The deepest, darkest, smallest pit, saved for those who commit the most heinous of offenses.

A place for betrayers.

Worse than murderers. Worse than monsters...

"Whatcha doing, Fish?" Conrad's nasally voice interrupted his thoughts. But Oliver was grateful for the interruption.

"Studying," he replied.

He felt something small and hard hit him square on the back. Conrad had thrown a small blue marble at him and it rolled underneath Oliver's bed.

"Well, stop it," Conrad said.

"Why?"

"Got something to show you."

Oliver rolled his eyes and put down his book, inwardly happy for the distraction. Dante was giving him a headache from too many dark thoughts.

"What is it?"

"Take a look at these."

Conrad handed him a stack of drawings and daguerrotypes. Oliver's mouth dropped open and he sat on the edge of Conrad's desk.

"Bet you've never seen anything like that."

Oliver shook his head, mute, and continued studying the images. Most of them were women in their undergarments, breasts and legs exposed. Some were men and women together, naked and fornicating.

"Like what you see, Fish?" Conrad grinned at him in a malicious sort of way, clearly enjoying Oliver's discomfort.

"They're... very well lit," Oliver stuttered, and Conrad let out a deep belly laugh.

Oliver wasn't sure how he felt about the images he was seeing, other than he initial shock and underlying shame. He was confused, mostly, and intrigued by some of the acrobatics that seemed to him almost physically impossible. There was one image, though, that sent a rush of heat through his belly and made him shift a little on the desk. The woman's legs were draped high over the naked man's shoulders. She was flat chested with thick eyebrows, and her hair was slicked back rather than piled in round poofs on top of her head. He couldn't stop staring, even though he desperately wanted to.

He came out of his stupor when he heard Conrad laughing jovially at him.

"Go take care of business in the wash room, young man." He gestured toward Oliver's lap. "Don't want any uninvited guests popping up."

Oliver scowled at Conrad and shoved the daguerrotypes back at him, then stubbornly returned to his desk and his book, shifting uncomfortably in his seat and doing his best to ignore Conrad's amused chuckling.

* * *

It was a particularly cold night in early winter. Oliver marveled out the window; rain and snow at the same time. He huddled under his bedding and found that sleep, for the first time in months, came easily to him.

A loud, crashing noise startled him awake.

Thunder? No. He could see a shadow out of the corner of his eyes. There was someone in his room, scrambling through his window. He leapt out of bed, his arms raised and ready to fight, though he was shivering in the cold.

He stopped in place, lost his breath, almost fell back onto the bed. Standing before him was... yes. It was Kyle. _Kyle._Trembling. Almost blue. He wore no coat and frost shimmered on his eyelashes.

"Kyle?" he whispered, afraid almost of his own voice, as if it were too strong it would blow Kyle back out the window where he came from. He looked over at Conrad's side of the room. His bed was empty and unmade. Oliver breathed a sigh of relief, then took two steps toward Kyle and gathered him in his arms.

"You're like ice," he said. Kyle only shivered. "You came all this way?"

Kyle gripped him around the waist with his frozen arms and it was all the response Oliver needed. He could hear his teeth clattering.

"Can you feel your fingers?"

Kyle shook his head.

"We need to get you warm. Get you out of those clothes..."

Kyle nodded and started unbuttoning his shirt, or at least he tried to. His fingers were stiff and unable to do the task.

"Come here." Oliver led Kyle to his bed. They knelt on the mattress and Oliver carefully removed Kyle's shirt, running his hands over Kyle's shoulders to warm them. He wasn't quite sure what to do next. He knew that Kyle needed warmth, but he wasn't sure the best and quickest way to get all that bone-chilling blue out of his veins. Kyle seemed to know, though. He lowered himself onto the mattress and, taking hold of Oliver's hand, brought him down on top of him. Oliver removed his sleep shirt, because he remembered that skin-to-skin would be warmer. He covered Kyle like a blanket, protecting him from the elements. Kyle smiled at him then closed his eyes.

They didn't speak. They didn't have to. It felt right. Having Kyle with him, finally, in this place where they could be alone, where Salma and his mother and any other prying eyes couldn't see them. Where they could do what they wanted, take what they wanted, _be_who they wanted. It felt incredibly right. Nothing felt better than holding Kyle in his arms. It felt even more right when Kyle stroked his neck with his trembling, warmed fingers, pulled him down, and kissed him softly on the mouth.

It was like kissing winter itself.

He wasn't sure what came next. They were kissing, and it was better than before, more alive, and then they were under the covers, and their pants were gone, and Oliver didn't know when that happened or how, but it didn't matter because they rolled around together and it was warm, incredibly warm. Kyle was no longer ice in his arms, but a fiery blaze burning underneath him. They were laid out, every inch of skin touching each other, and it felt amazing. More amazing than anything Oliver could have ever imagined. Kissing and stroking and rolling and the way their bodies moved together perfectly, like a dance.

He had a flash of something then, something frightening and exhilarating. Conrad's sinful pictures. The man and the woman and how their bodies came together. He looked down at Kyle and Kyle nodded at him, smiling a mysterious, benevolent smile, as if he knew, as if he could read every single one of Oliver's depraved, damnable thoughts. But oh, that smile, and the white-hot warmth, and the feelings in his chest like this was heaven and Kyle was an angel, fresh-faced and beautiful, waiting to take him home.

He pulled back, lined up where he thought everything would fit, prepared to push in. Kyle stared up at him with intense, black eyes. Oliver finally spoke, one word, the only word that mattered, _"Kyle,"_before they came together as one.

Kyle threw his head back and cried out.

And then in an instant he was blue and ice again, stiff and frozen in Oliver's arms, his eyes dead and unmoving.

Another loud crash. Oliver sat straight up in bed. Alone. His window crashed open and closed again in the storm's gail. He was covered in sweat, hot all over. Something felt warm and wet in his lap. He felt under the covers and quickly wiped himself clean with his sheet. There was a burning feeling under his skin.

In the morning the doctor was called and he spent the next three days in bed with fever. And when he finally woke from it, he tried to remember his dreams, but they faded like fog on glass. All that remained was a vague feeling of warmth, and then a frightening coldness that ached in his bones.

* * *

After a long afternoon in the library, breathing in dust and dry paper, all Oliver wanted to do was go back to his room and take a long nap. Dreamless, he hoped. But the sight that greeted him as he came through the door made his face blanch. Conrad was standing next to his desk, one of Kyle's many letters open in his hands.

"Oo-wee, Fish! You sneaky little charmer!" He waved the letter in the air. "Who's 'K'?"

"Give me that."

"Is that your sweetheart back home? You've got yourself a little filly waiting for you?"

"What? No." Oliver shook his head emphatically. "No. Of course not."

"How'd it go, again?" Conrad scanned the letter then trilled in a girlish, singsong voice, "_'Yours always. —K'_Sure sounds like a sweetheart letter to me, Fish."

"Give it here." Oliver made a swipe for it, but Conrad evaded, skip-stepping to the side. "That's... that's personal. That's my personal, private property."

"_'Dearest Oliver—'_"

"It doesn't say that!"

"_'I miss you terribly...'_"

It did say that.

A growl ripped its way through Oliver's throat. For a moment his vision was all red and heat, and he grabbed Conrad by the collar and shoved his back against the wall.

"Hey, okay man," Conrad said, lifting his hands to his chest in surrender. His eyes were big and round and afraid. "Just... calm down. Here. Take it. Gee whiz, Fish. You need to lighten up."

"I'm fine."

"No man. I know what you need." He smiled, and it was a devilish smile. "I know exactly what you need."

* * *

Oliver didn't think it was a good idea. In fact, he thought it one of the worst ideas ever. But he found himself struggling to say no. Not after Conrad had found his letter. Anything to get his roommate off his case had to be worth it.

He slowly climbed the stairs then knocked on an open door.

"Uh... _bonjour? Gigi?_" He stepped inside. The room had dark-paneled walls and smelled too sweet, like spilled perfume or spoiled fruit.

A small blond woman sat at a vanity in front of the cracked mirror, then turned her head. There was an annoyed arch to her eyebrows. "Oh, for cripe's sake. Another one. Hey, you. Blondie. Do—You—Speak—English?"

"Uh..."

"English? Eng—glish?"

"Yes?"

She eyed him suspiciously. "You sound American."

"That's because I kind of am." Oliver wiped his sweating palms on his trousers. "American."

"Well hell. Why didn't you say so? Thought you were another one of them French fellas. I don't know what it is about this town. They seem to be everywhere. And they do love their..." She dragged a long-nailed finger across the top of her bosom; "women."

"I think... maybe... the name attracts them?"

"Gigi? Really?" Her small, sharp nose pinched in confusion. "I wouldn't know anything about that. It's just a lark. Here, I'll make a deal with you. If I let you call me Stacy, will you quit talking all that froufrou French gibberish at me?"

"Deal." Oliver stuck out his hand and smiled politely. Only because he didn't know exactly what he was supposed to do.

Stacy didn't take his hand. Instead she just looked him up and down with her hands on her hips, as if he were a piece of stock in need of inspection.

"You're a pretty big boy. How old are you anyway? Cuz I don't like kids. Some creepy old man tried to bring me his nephew once, wasn't more than 15 years old. It was not a fun time for anyone, let me tell you."

Oliver gulped. This really was a monumentally bad, stupid idea. "I'm... uh... 19," he said. "And we don't have to do anything!" he added quickly, in a high-pitched voice that made his cheeks go red with embarrassment. "We can just... play cards..."

He sounded like a fool, and Stacy stared at him like he was fool. It was settled. He was the world's biggest fool. What would his father think of him, who had taken him so brazenly to a house of ill-repute when he was still a boy himself, ordered him drinks, treated him like a man? Isn't this what he was supposed to do?

Stacy walked slowly behind him, her hands clasped behind her back in a demure manner. She sauntered to the door and gently pushed it close.

"Come here."

"There?" he squeaked.

"It's all right." Her eyes were soft then, and her voice soothing. "Everything's gonna be all right. Just trust me."

Oliver nodded, his throat dry and his mind blank. She led him to what was once an ornate chair but now had threadbare upholstery and chipped arms, and gently sat him down.

"We'll start slow." With deft fingers, she untied the front of her dress and revealed a black bustier. Another quick movement of fingers and her pale breasts were exposed. Oliver quickly averted his gaze, but she cupped his chin with one hand and used her other to bring his hand to her bosom. He closed his eyes and grimaced. It felt like the time he picked an overripe peach off the ground and squeezed it between his fingers.

"You can put your mouth on it."

Oliver thought of the peach and a bad taste came into his mouth.

"Uh... no—no thank you. I'm all right." He dropped his hand and Stacy huffed a bit.

"Fine then. Let's just get straight to the show." She slipped her hand into his lap, felt around a bit while he sat there like a stone, and frowned. "This is not going to work. You're going to have to think of her instead."

"Her? Her who?"

"The girl you're in love with."

"There's no... there's no girl."

"Trust me. I've seen this before. You won't be able to get anything done down here unless you think of her instead, okay?"

"You don't... you don't care if a man does that?"

"What? You think I'm gonna be thinking about _you_, stud?"

"Oh."

"I'm just saying. It helps to think about someone else. To pretend you're with someone else. Trust me." She seemed kind of sad, then, for the first time, and Oliver thought to himself once again how incredibly stupid it was for him to be here. He didn't want to do this, he knew it was wrong, but something else, some small little voice inside of him was urging him on, telling him to just get it over with and everything would make sense again. He wouldn't feel wrong anymore, and everyone would leave him alone.

"You from around here?" Stacy asked. She had hiked up her skirts and turned toward the wall. She wasn't wearing any undergarments save a pair of torn white stockings pulled up to her thighs, held up by ragged looking garters. Her skin was porcelain white, wrapped around too-skinny legs. She looked to him like an abandoned doll. It was altogether off-putting.

"Montana," he finally managed to spit out. "Grew up on a ranch out there..." Small talk was the only thing keeping him from feeling sick.

Stacy stuck out her backside and propped a hand up against the wall. "What's the hold-up, farmboy?"

"What... what do you want me to do?"

"Whatever you want. That's the point. Oh! Just one thing. I don't need any knocking up, so you got to pull out before you're done, okay? Either that, or go up the back alley."

Oliver grimaced. What did that even mean?

"I... I can't..."

"Close your eyes, darlin'. Think about the girl you want to be with. Think about her naked. Lying beneath you. Opening up to you. Taking you in, inside of her, making you feel warm and alive and good all over. She's yours. She's all yours. You can have her. You can take her."

Oliver tried. He tried to imagine a scenario where this would be okay. He went through all the steps, quickly, in his mind. Courtship, marriage, the marriage bed. But it wasn't working. There was no girl to fill that empty space.

He concentrated hard on anything at all he could think of that would take him away from this place, from the moment.

_Hay and earth and sweat. Pine wood and wildflowers._

Dark eyes, long lashes. That deep, rumbling laugh.

A forgotten dream...

He stood and took a step toward Stacy. She turned and before he knew what was happening she had his pants unbuckled. "That's better," she said, glancing down at his unmentionables. She faced the wall again and grabbed his hand, led it to the crevice between her legs.

"This is what you want. Right here."

Oliver made a face, but did what he was told. He could do this. Everything would be okay. He could do this. All he had to do was go away to that secret place, the place no one had to know about, not Conrad, not his father, not Stacy.

"Mmm. Yes... that's it..."

He stopped, pulled back. "Don't talk. Don't say anything." But it was already too late. The spell was broken. He was back here in this musty, foul-smelling place, with a girl he'd just met and had absolutely no intention of marrying.

It wasn't right. He wasn't right. _She_wasn't right.

He quickly pulled up his pants and fastened his belt. "I have to go."

"No you don't."

"I'm sorry. You're... you're a very lovely girl, and I hope someday you don't have to pretend anymore, but I really... _really_have to go." He slipped on his jacket and rushed out the door before she could stop him. He was down the stairs and through the main hall in a matter of seconds, as if he were fleeing from a burning building. Once outside he stopped to catch his breath.

Conrad was there, leaning against the horse post, laughing at him. Always laughing at him.

"How'd it go in there?"

"Let's just go."

* * *

"Did Fish's little fish go flop-flopping around?"

They were walking back to campus, through the green park. Oliver stopped on the path and balled his fists. He'd finally had enough of Conrad's taunting.

"You—you're... you're an asshole!"

"Ha ha ha!" Conrad pumped his fist with glee. "Atta boy, Fish."

"Just shut up and leave me alone." He started walking again.

"I just don't want to see you so... pent up and repressed. It's not good for you. You look like you're gonna explode like blasting powder at any minute."

"I'm fine," he said. "I don't need your help."

"Woah!" Conrad said suddenly. "What the hell is that?" He had stopped in his tracks and laid a hand on Oliver's shoulder. Oliver roughly pushed it off, but then he froze, too, when he saw what had gotten Conrad's attention.

"Jesus Christ," Conrad breathed out. His face had gone sheet-white, and Oliver was sure his had done the same.

Tied to a tree, limp and pale and covered in dark stains, was a body. Dead.

Oliver's stomach roiled and he bent in two as a sudden wave of vomit came retching out of him. He stood, breathing hard, and wiped his mouth. He couldn't speak, couldn't breathe. He couldn't imagine such violence. Such horror. It hardly looked real. But the smell. Oh God. He wouldn't ever forget that smell.

He took a step closer, somehow drawn to it, even as every cell in his body was telling him to run.

The face hung low, but he could see dark circles of blood where the eyes once were. More blood stained the face's nostrils, the mouth, even the ears. Seven dark circles.

"For fuck's sake," Conrad said, his voice high pitched and scared. "It's fucking Louis. They fucking killed him!"

That's when Oliver noticed the body's chest. Carved into the bare skin was the word _pervert_, and below that, _sodomite_. There were more words on the ground near his feet, painted with blood, but Oliver's vision had gone blurry and he couldn't read it.

"Fuck!" Conrad said again. "Look what they did to the poor bastard." He sounded like he was on the verge of tears. Oliver couldn't stand it anymore. The smell and the noises in his head and the way his stomach boiled and burned.

"I have to... I have to go," he said, and then he was running. Running as fast as he could, anywhere. Away from there. Away from his own thoughts and the terrible screams in his head, slaughtered animals and the crack of whips and Hell. The fires of Hell.

Louis was _different_, they'd said. Not right. He was a... a... Oliver didn't even have a word for it. He was a pervert and a sissy and all those other horrible things carved into his flesh and scrawled in his own blood under his mangled, blue-gray feet. Because he... because he lay down with other men. He perverted the natural law, perverted God's law.

Those dark circles of blood were permanently imprinted on Oliver's eyelids. He closed his eyes as he ran, and all he saw were empty sockets and dark patches of stain where a face used to be. And that small build, that dark hair...

It was all mixing together in his head. The world was loud and confusing and he couldn't get his thoughts straight. He saw Kyle, hands swollen and bruised. A schoolboy's punishment for using the wrong hand. _"Was kinda your fault though... You distracted me with that nice drawing of what we're gonna be."_He closed his eyes tighter, willed the world to make sense again, but it wasn't working. Kyle was staring at him, his back exposed, leaning against a post. Staring at him with accusation in his eyes. He stared at him even as the whip came down, even as Oliver's father's arm moved with brutal speed, thrashing his back over and over and over again until it was nothing but bloody red streaks and liquid skin.

Because he was a... a...

_Because he's mine._

Oliver shook his head. Everything was fuzzy. That wasn't how it happened. _That wasn't how it happened._

The world spun out of control. His vision blurred and he didn't know where he was or where he was going until he was in his room again. His back hit his chair and like snapping awake everything finally came into focus. Slowed down. Crystalized. Funneled into a single point and became absolutely clear.

He knew what he needed to do. He knew the _right_thing to do.

He took out a pen and ink and paper. His hand shook as he wrote.

_Kyle—_

_Do not write to me any more. I don't want to hear from you, or see you, ever again._

_For both our sakes, please... just leave me alone._

* * *

(...TBC...)


	11. Chapter 11: The Kindness of Strangers

**Lay Me Down**

* * *

_**Chapter Eleven - The Kindness of Strangers**_

* * *

**Lakeside Ranch, Montana Territory. 1882.  
Kyle Lewis, age 19.**

* * *

He really should have seen this coming. He felt stupid for expecting otherwise. Once Mr. Fish took off after Mr. King he should have known his fate was sealed.

"I want you out of here." Barbara stared at him with the coldest of blue eyes.

"What are you gonna do then, huh?" Kyle demanded. "Work the land your damn self?"

She ignored him, pinching her mouth into a tight line.

"You need me," he said. "You need me more than I need this place, and that's God's honest truth."

Well, maybe there was a bit of lie in there. He loved the land, more than he could say, and it would break his heart to leave it to strangers; or worse, to neglect.

"You can't do this." Another lie. Of course she could. "Use your goddamn head for a second. You can't be here all by yourselves. Mr. King or Rogan or whatever he calls himself won't be the only wolf who comes around when there's naught but two women and no rifles between you."

Barbara's cold facade twitched a little at that. He was getting to her. Reason would win out in the end.

"Mrs. Fish. Please. I can be a help to you. I know I ain't family, but... this is my home, too." He didn't have anything else. And she right well knew it for the truth it was.

"I don't care," she said, with so much ice hardening her pretty voice.

"You haven't a heart at all, have you?"

"Stop it. No more. You are to leave this place, and you are never, ever to come back, you hear?"

Kyle felt a sharp stinging in his eyes. He was having trouble lately understanding why it seemed no one wanted anything to do with him. He'd been a good, loyal, faithful hand to the Fishes. He'd been everything good he could think of to Oliver. And yet, he kept getting cast aside. Told he was no longer wanted or needed. Told to go away and never come back. There was only so much rejection a man could take before he started questioning... everything. His very worth.

"Why are you doing this?"

"You can't be here when he gets back!"

"And what if he ain't coming back?" he yelled back.

Her hand came across his face hard, the smack making a sharp noise and burning his skin. He felt a bit of torn flesh where her fingernail had caught his cheek. Kyle swiped at his face with his thumb, pulled away a tiny smear of blood, and wiped it on the inside of his jacket. He squared his shoulders and looked her dead in the eyes.

"He'd of been back by now. Been near two months."

That charlatan Hudson King came through and spoke pretty and made promises and took all the cows and all the money and Mr. Fish had no choice but to chase after him. Kyle'd had no word if he was ever found or if a gunfight had settled it, but he knew that this place couldn't survive for long, and was in even more danger if he weren't around to take care of it. But Mrs. Fish was stubborn, and she hated him for loving her land as much as he did. For loving more than that.

Barbara crossed her arms and looked at him with that mule-like stubbornness of hers.

"He's dead, ma'am," he said quietly. "You gotta know that by now."

"I know no such thing. You speak with your devil's mouth all your devil's lies."

"Sometimes you can be as mean as snakes."

She only glared at him.

"Fine, I'll go. But you'll want me back when you can't take this place no more without me to do all your hard business. You'll want me back and I'll be long gone, you old such-and-such."

He wished he could've thought of a coarser name to call her, but his emotions were spinning all out of sorts and he didn't really know which way was up excepting the sky was where it should be. He turned from her before she could see the stupid, no-good tears forming in his eyes and started walking at a brisk pace back to his quarters.

"You get on out of here and don't you ever come back, with that devil inside of you!" she called out to him.

He wiped the wetness off his face and slammed into his small house, gathering as many things as he could and rustling them all into an old piece of fabric, tying it into a bindle and hefting it over his shoulder. He looked around the small, unadorned room. With everything he held dear already in the sack, there was nothing left for him here.

* * *

**Ypsilanti School for Boys, Michigan. 1882.  
Oliver Fish, age 19.**

* * *

"You're going home, son."

Oliver's mouth fell open. He was sure he looked like a dead guppy to the dean.

"H-home, sir? But... why?"

The dean shuffled a few papers on his mahogany desk and sighed.

"Your tuition has been revoked. Received a letter from your aunt and uncle this morning. I'm very sorry to have to see you go. You seem like a bright young man with a promising future."

Oliver felt his arms shaking, but he wasn't quite sure why. He looked around the fine room with all its dust-free books and lamps. He was reminded again how different this place was from home.

Home. He was going home. Back to his parents. Back to... back to Kyle. It would be so much more difficult to keep his distance knowing exactly where Kyle was. Knowing when he was in his bed, sleeping. Knowing when he was hollering at the steers or breaking the young horses. How was he ever to go back home and see that face that haunted his nightmares?

That beautiful face he needed to protect from his own feelings. From a world that would cause him harm, the worst kinds of harm, if Oliver were ever to act on those feelings.

He gathered his things listlessly, didn't bother to say goodbye to anyone, and walked all the way downtown to the train station. He used his last five dollars on a ticket.

The train moved quickly, far too quickly, bringing him ever closer to a fate that would destroy everything he held dear.

* * *

**Croop County, Montana Territory. 1882.  
Kyle Lewis, age 19.**

* * *

Before he left the ranch, he took a horse. The big brown one he used to saddle up on his rides with Oliver. It was the first time he ever stole something, but, really, he considered it back-payment for years of service gone unappreciated. Barbara wouldn't know what to do with it, anyway. It'd die of neglect under her care.

He wasn't exactly proud of himself for stealing the horse. But it had to be done. He needed a horse; and he was pretty damn sure the horse needed him. He only regretted he couldn't take all the stock that was left with him. He'd miss them. Every a-one of them. They'd been under his care for so long.

He picked up odd jobs here and there where he could. Other ranches on the outskirts of town, some even outside of Croop County. The life of a migratory worker was something to get used to, but he didn't let it get him down. It was the same as before: work all day, sleep all night, fill your belly as often as you could. Only now his wages were better. It was just finding steady work that was a problem. It wasn't unusual to go a few weeks without finding something.

He filled those unworking days with travel. He'd meet whoever he could, try to finagle his way into a job already full-staffed. Sometimes his silver tongue worked; other times, he was left high and dry.

When he had money, he stayed in Mrs. Lu's boarding house in town. Surprisingly enough, he found he really liked it there. There was always company and warm food and a table to share stories and be distracted for a little while. He'd never really had anything like that at the Lakeside, and he took to it quickly, that easy camaraderie, the fraternity that formed between the boarders, sharing such close quarters after a long day's work.

When he didn't have money, for lack of work, he rode out into the prairie and slept on the open land. He didn't mind that so much either, as long as the winds weren't too cold and strong enough to gust out his small fire. There was something... romantic about spending the night out of doors in the wide open countryside. It made him feel more like a man, like a true cowboy. Someone who only needed himself and the land to survive.

He wasn't exactly sure what he'd do in the winter time if the snows came in and there wasn't no work to be had. But he'd face that when it came, just like he always did.

He'd hum to himself, sometimes, and it would calm the horse and his own tired limbs. Other times he'd take out his book—the first one Oliver had ever read to him—and read it to himself by the light of the fire. Or study again, for the hundredth time, the drawing that had been his birthday gift. Sometimes he thought he saw another figure across the fire, through the smoke and the dark spaces where the flames danced off each other. He knew it was just a trick of his eyes, but he liked it. It was comforting to imagine Oliver there with him, reading to him, making him feel like he was at home, wherever home happened to be for the night.

It wasn't the place that mattered to him so much as the people.

But some nights he'd read the letter again—that damned awful letter—and all the blood in his belly would boil. He thought about tearing it to pieces, throwing it in the fire, undoing his pants and pissing all over it, it made him so mad inside. That low down dirty _dog_, with all his kind words and promises. Nothing more than a liar and a thief.

Thieved so many precious hours of Kyle's youth. Thieved his dreams for the future.

But those feelings were fleeting. Largely because the letter remained mostly in his back pocket, nestled behind the beloved drawing, unread and forgotten. And because when he'd see Oliver in his firelight visions, he was still... Oliver. Still the boy who had taken care of him, made sure he could read and write, who had cried into his fingers, who lived as much inside Kyle as his own flesh and blood.

One night, out on the chilly range, he did something that surprised him. He broke his rule about naming animals. He didn't mean to, but there had been a loud, booming noise in the distance, and when the horse got spooked, he calmed and shushed him, a soft hand on the horse's mane, and he found himself saying, "It's all right, Ol. Everything's all right. You're okay, Ol. You're okay."

Maybe it was the horse's large, soft eyes that did him in. Sometimes the beast looked at him, and Kyle could believe that it really _saw _him. And that it trusted him. And so the name stuck, even against his better judgment.

* * *

**Lakeside Ranch, Montana Territory. 1882.  
Oliver Fish, age 19.**

* * *

"Where's pa?" Oliver asked first thing.

His mother fiddled with her gloves and didn't look him in the eyes.

"He's out on business."

"And the cows? I didn't see the cows."

"The cows are... gone. We aren't herding cattle anymore."

"But... why?"

"Oliver, my boy." She came up to him in her small boots and wrinkled frock and took him by both cheeks. "Don't ask so many questions. I'm tired and it's been a long trip for you and we can discuss it all tomorrow."

Oliver didn't fight her. He was tired, too. His head had been so full of fear of what he would come home to, he hadn't been able to sleep on the train. And now that he was home, and found the place missing so many things that he had left there, he didn't want to have to deal with any of it just then.

It could wait for the morning, when he was rested and could think better. All he knew was that his limbs were like lead and his eyelids were drooping and home wasn't as comforting to him as he hoped it would be.

The morning didn't bring with it any further answers. His mother skirted all his questions and wouldn't tell him what was going on. He tried Salma, as well, and she was just as stubbornly vague. He didn't know where his father was, why they had given up their most profitable stock, and then there was something else. He hadn't heard a single word about Kyle from either woman. In fact, he hadn't seen any sign of Kyle on the ranch whatsoever.

And the large brown horse was gone, too.

He gathered his courage and ventured out the workmans' quarters. The shutters to Kyle's window were hanging open and uneven. He dared a peek inside.

There was no sign of Kyle. Nothing to indicate he had slept there in weeks. None of his knickknacks on the small table. No blanket on the bed. All that remained, the only evidence that anyone had lived there at all, was a circle of candle wax stuck to the small bureau next to the empty bed.

* * *

It only took him a few days to realize that his father wasn't coming back. That he would probably never come back. That he was probably dead. He allowed himself at least an hour to take that in. To sit on his bed and feel his chest cave in. To cry into one of his father's old shirts and pretend that he wasn't crying at all. That someone was there to take him in his arms and brush his tears away. But it was only that hour, because there was so much for him to take care of now that he was home.

The ranch was in shambles. He feared his mother would go mad if they stayed there any longer. She assured him, over and over, that his father was merely on business, that he'd return any day, but Oliver couldn't believe her, as much as he wanted to. She carried on with her needlework, with giving orders to Salma, but her hair was starting to mat and her clothes were unkempt. Once or twice she had called him George and not even been aware of her mistake.

He realized then, and it shook him deep down in his stomach, that he was now responsible for the land. That he was the man in charge. And with his father, Hector, Kyle, Mr. Lewis, and the cattle all gone, he didn't know if he was capable of keeping the ranch—of keeping his family, really—from falling into ruin.

"We need to sell the ranch," he told Salma. It was useless to speak to his mother. She would only argue that everything was fine; that everything would turn out okay.

He wasn't exactly sure how to go about it, but he figured he would go into town and feel around a bit. Make his name known, perhaps hang postings for travelers to see.

And then there was the unknown future, hanging over his head. What would he do now, without anyone to tell him where to go or how to get along? What would he do with only himself to rely on?

* * *

**Croop County, Montana Territory. 1882.  
Kyle Lewis, age 19.**

* * *

Finally, some luck.

He'd managed to secure himself a long-term job breaking horses on a ranch just a few miles outside of the county limits. There was a room for him to stay on site, and small general store only a few miles away where he could sit for meals in the back room with other ranch hands from all around. After weeks and months of drifting, he could finally settle down for once and carve out his small existence in the large world.

It was the most content he'd been since leaving the Lakeside. Since being left at the Lakeside.

Everything had been going good as goose feathers, too, 'til some rascal up and stole his boots right out from under his bed. He worked barefoot for a week a'fore he could buy an old, mud-stained pair from Mrs. Lu what used to belong to her long-dead husband. They weren't the best fit, and certainly not in the best shape, but it was better than walking about like a street urchin who couldn't afford to dress himself properly. Not that Kyle was much interested in status, but there had to be a line drawn in the dirt. He wasn't a no-good laze-about. He was an honest, hard-working man, and a man wore boots, even if his toes had more room to wiggle than an earthworm in an empty jam pot.

Boots were nothing. Boots were replaceable. There was only one thing he kept with him that he could never part with. He often unconsciously stuck a hand in his back pocket, letting his fingers reassuringly graze the folded paper there, hidden and safe.

* * *

**Croop County, Montana Territory. 1882.  
Oliver Fish, age 19.**

* * *

A persistent and annoying buzz kept drawing Oliver's attention away from the man sitting in front of him. Sheriff Ramsey leaned back in his chair, his legs stretched all the way out and to the side of the desk, ankles crossed boot-over-boot. His hands rested on the slightly bulging pouch of his stomach and he looked Oliver over with something akin to indifference. His face was long, oval in shape, and housed eyes the color of ice. His pronounced cheekbones imparted a gauntness to his features that could be deceiving; he was still a man in the prime of his life, broad-shouldered, tall, thickly built. Strong.

Ramsey swatted lazily at the buzzing fly as it swooped near his sweaty, pale face.

"Awful peculiar request coming from the likes of a schoolboy," he said. His voice was low, slightly sibilant with lazy s's dragging from one word to the next. It would have lent him an air of easiness, had his eyes not been so entirely devoid of humor.

The room was small, confining, and terribly hot. It was situated in the southwest corner of the jailhouse, separated from the short row of barred cells by a Dutch door whose top and bottom halves had been jury-rigged together with rusted metal braces, creating one movable piece. There was one window set high above the sheriff's desk, long and narrow. Smudges of dust and debris coated the glass surface, and dark patches of rust had crawled over and through the cracks of the metal hinges, engulfing them completely, like hordes of invaders swarming a castle upon siege. Oliver imagined the window hadn't been opened in years, maybe never at all. The air in the room was thick, almost sticky with odors and particles of dust. Sunlight valiantly fought its way through the grimy glass, casting the room in sharp yellows set against dark shadows.

"I hope you would consider the request as you would any other," Oliver replied with a steady voice. He hated to sound so formal, but his nerves were buzzing under his skin almost as loudly as the fly that looped in erratic circles around the sheriff's stiff black hat.

"Can you shoot?"

"Yes sir."

"Can you take a bullet?" Ramsey spit a wad of black, slimy tobacco onto the floor.

"Take it... where?"

"No, boy." Ramsey's pale blue eyes gleamed with menace. "I mean, you ever been shot?"

He shook his head sharply. "No. No sir. Never."

Ramsey pulled the six-shooter out of his holster, fast as a crack of lightning, and aimed it square between Oliver's eyes.

"Whoa! I—I—I—" Oliver tried to swallow, but his throat had gone dry. "What are you doing?" he finally squeaked out. He prided himself on not flinching, but that didn't mean his heart wasn't pounding against his chest like an unruly, cornered beast.

"My men are tough," Ramsey drawled. His voice was still so calm, deliberate, threateningly low. "My men don't shake with fright or piss themselves, you got that, boy?"

"Y—Yes sir." A slight quiver. He hoped Ramsey hadn't detected it.

Ramsey slowly retracted the gun. The un-clicking of the hammer was possibly the sweetest sound Oliver had ever heard.

"Looks like you might have some steel in that stomach after all, schoolboy. But I ain't convinced of you yet."

He led Oliver outside into the orange dust and oppressive heat of the main road. The sun was high and had already burnt up all the morning clouds, leaving the sky wide open, a large canvas of yellow emptiness. Ramsey pulled his gun from his holster once more, but this time he presented it to Oliver butt-first. Oliver took it with a sweaty hand.

Across from the jailhouse an old post-and-rail fence had been dug into the hard ground. Ramsey strutted across the street, the spurs on his boot heels jangling, unpinned his sheriff's star from his chest, and jammed one of the sharp points into the top of the nearest post so that the metal shield stood upright.

"Go on, son," Ramsey said, gesturing to the gun he'd placed in Oliver's hand. "Show me if that hand's as steady as them nerves."

Oliver took a deep breath. This was the moment to prove himself. Years of relentless practice, years of solitary afternoons with no company but the crows.

He pointed the gun and hoped his aim was true.

The quiet afternoon woke up at the explosion of gun powder, sending a few birds into flight. Almost imperceptible, but overwhelmingly satisfying: the faraway clink of metal slamming into metal.

Ramsey inspected the dented star with round, surprised eyes. "Well I'll be damned." He pocketed the star, walked back across the narrow street, and aimed a finger at Oliver's chest. "We got ourselves a regular Bill Hickok."

"Is he a deputy here?"

Ramsey let out a deep, hoarse laugh and slapped Oliver across the shoulders. "And a joker, too. Come on, son. Can't ignore what my own eyes done seen."

Oliver thought his heart might stop beating during the half second pause Ramsey took before continuing.

"I'll take you on."

Oliver let out the breath he'd been holding, sighing with a heady mixture of relief, happiness, and trepidation at what his life was about to become. It had always been his dream—a dream he'd shared with one person alone—and now it was actually happening. Oliver blinked his eyes a few times, half-expecting to wake up back in Michigan, but the same dry road and dusty town appeared before him.

"But first things first," Ramsey said, his voice going low again. "You owe me a new star, Deputy Fish."

Another clap across the shoulders, and this one felt a little bit like pride.

With the sale of the ranch final, and now weekly wages to add to the coffers, he could assuredly take care of his mother. No longer a schoolboy. No longer a burden. He was, at last, a man.

* * *

**Croop County, Montana Territory. 1882.  
Kyle Lewis, age 20.**

* * *

Another birthday. Kyle rose from his cot and stretched his arms high above his head. He peered out the window into the fading gray of dawn. The rooster call came late this morning; the sun had almost crested the eastern mountains in full. He rose and dressed and brewed a miserable cup of coffee that was more grounds than anything, but it didn't take the smile off his face.

Twenty years old. It felt good when he sounded it out.

He knew things like age didn't much matter in his kind of life. Young men grew up fast and twenty may as well have been forty for all it really meant to anyone.

"Happy birthday to me," he said quietly in the small, empty room. He sat on his cot and carefully unfolded the yellowed, stiff paper that he'd pulled from the bottom of his trunk. It had been his first—and only—birthday present. He couldn't remember a thing better than that, even though he got himself whupped for having it. It had been worth the whupping, especially for the tender way Oliver had held his hand afterward, pressed his lips to the bruises.

It wasn't often nowadays he let his mind wander to the subject of Oliver. Once he'd settled himself under the employ of Mr. Roberts, he'd made a promise to leave his old life behind and start completely fresh. There was no Lakeside. There was no Jinny. No Rebecca. No Pa. No Barbara or George. No Salma with her haunted eyes. And especially no Oliver.

He'd tucked the book away, and the drawing, and the letter. (The candles had long since burned down into nothing.) He buried them down at the very bottom of his things, someplace dark and lonely where they'd be forgotten.

But today was his birthday.

Today, he didn't want to forget where he'd come from or who he'd been.

* * *

It felt strange, having that extra bit of weight in his back pocket again after months without. He'd re-folded the drawing and stuffed it and its constant companion, the letter, into his trousers before heading out to the stables, then the round pen, with two young geldings in tow.

Jimmy was already out there working with an older horse, and there was another worker, gray-haired and rough-skinned, leaning against the wooden railing outside the pen. He tipped his hat at Kyle then continued chewing on a piece of straw. They'd met once or twice before, but hardly worked in the same area of the ranch at the same time. Not like him and Jimmy, who always had the same jobs and always got on each others' nerves before long.

He liked the kid, sure enough, but there was too much carelessness about him. He was bound to get them both bucked and brained before the year was out with his wild, youthful antics. Or maybe it was just that Kyle envied him. He sometimes thought he wouldn't mind growing up a little slower, or that happy illiterate ignorance that suited Jimmy just fine. The boy was perfectly satisfied with life, because he didn't know what else was out there but what he already got.

"You're gonna dent that lopsided skull of yours you keep riding him so fast," Kyle called out. Jimmy only _whooped! _in response, tearing his hat off his head and waving it above him like a lasso. He finally slowed down and unmounted near Kyle, who was busy fixing a bridle to his horse. He was trying to get the animal used to the feeling of the bit in his mouth. He wouldn't actually be riding him with it on. Not just yet. Unlike Jimmy, Kyle tried to exercise at least a little bit of caution around the animals.

"'Ey, you drop that, Stretch?" A nickname aimed at Kyle's less than oversized stature.

"Ha-ha."

"Nah, really." Jimmy spit onto the ground and pointed at something in the shadow of the horse's twitching tail. "What's that? Paper money?"

Jimmy leaned for it before Kyle thrust out an arm and pushed him back. He was about to castigate him for being so dumb as to put himself behind an unbroken horse when the shadow moved and he got a better look at what it was Jimmy had gone for.

Paper. Folded. Well-used and yellowed.

His birthday present. He reached for it without thinking, stumbling a bit in his too-big boots.

He saw dust kick up before anything else. Actually, that was all he saw before something hard and strong slammed against him and he was knocked completely off his feet. He hit the ground with a sickening thump that reverberated in his head. His shoulder felt like it was on fire and his arm felt like dead weight, throbbing with a dull pain that echoed his wildly beating heart.

"Jesus Christ and 'postles!" he vaguely heard Jimmy say. It was hard to hear anything over the rushing thrum of his pulse in his ears and the strain of his lungs. Or maybe it was the ground shaking, and not his chest. The clop of hooves nearby made his stomach clench and nausea bubbled deep down within.

"Get him outta there!" It was the other man, closer now than he'd been.

"No," Kyle moaned softly. His uninjured arm reached for the drawing. His fingers were slow and numbed with shock, but he managed to push at it a little. The paper flipped over and he saw the inked script spelling out his name. Oliver's steady, well-practiced handwriting.

Not the drawing. The letter.

Kyle felt a sob escape his throat.

"Here we go," Jimmy said, lifting him under the arms and dragging his half-limp body toward the open gate. It hurt like hell, but Kyle was almost glad to feel anything that replaced the growing cold numbness around his heart.

"Never quite seen a one kick out like that," Jimmy murmured unhelpfully. "Your arm looks broke. It feel broke?"

"You a fucking doctor now, Jim?" Kyle managed to breathe out, but there wasn't any vinegar in his voice and Jimmy grinned down at him.

"Nah, but I got eyes, don't I?"

He settled Kyle against one of the gate posts after clearing him of the pen and the unmanaged horses clomping around aimlessly inside. Every part of Kyle burned, not the least most his sense of shame. He'd never done a stupider thing in his whole life, and that was saying something.

"Canya stand?" Jimmy helped lever him to his feet. Kyle wobbled, but Jimmy's spindly arm was there to steady him. "Need to get you out to the doc or summit like."

Kyle winced. "Can't afford a doctor. You think you could set it right?"

"Could try," Jimmy said, "but it'll hurt like a motherfucker."

"You know," the older man piped up. Kyle tried to remember a name, but it was eluding him. "I know a place. Cheap. Good clean help, but cheap."

"Yeah?" Kyle panted out. The pain was starting to get to him. He could feel droplets of sweat forming on his forehead. His hair was starting to soak through with it, too. "How cheap?"

"Cheap enough."

"Yeah, all right. How far?"

"In town."

"No shit?"

"Yeah. Right there in town. Back behind the butcher's shop." He rubbed his graying, stubbled chin. "The midwifery."

"The midwifery?" Kyle barked out a laugh, but it shook his body in a way that sent waves of pain all through him. "I ain't calving. My arm's broke!"

"Trust me on this, kid. Joplin'll take good care of that arm. She don't mess around."

"Sending me to the midwifery," Kyle mumbled to himself. He didn't really have any other choice, 'cept to rely on Jimmy to put his bones back in place. And Jimmy, scratching at his rear end like it was covered in ants, wasn't fit to be no doctor.

* * *

"It's broken all right."

Kyle winced as Leah Joplin evaluated the state of his bruised, swollen skin. She was a tall woman, standing even an inch or so taller than Kyle himself. Her pale blond hair was pulled back into a thick braid that rested on her shoulder. Little wisps escaped where they could, and when they caught the light, it was almost like a halo shone above her head.

Though she was old enough to be his ma, he thought if there was ever a woman to fall in love with, it'd be her with her pragmatic eyes and thin lips and strong nose.

That was probably just the pain delirium talking, though.

He watched her every move as she patched him up, set the bone (which, as Jimmy promised, hurt like a motherfucker), wrapped the splint, coated the wrapping in slurry gypsum plaster, taking it all in like there might be an exam on it later.

"It'll take a while to dry," she said once she had finished smoothing the wet bandage along the fracture.

"I have to get back."

"Not til it dries."

"Got work." He said it resolutely, as if it explained everything.

"Not with that arm, you don't. You can't do anything with it for at least a month."

Kyle almost choked. "A month?"

"Maybe two."

"I can't." Kyle moved to get up, but Leah pressed him gently back down.

"You must."

Kyle knew his eyes had gone big and round, could feel them getting a little damp. He felt like a child sitting in a chair too big for him. "What am I supposed to do?" he said quietly, more to himself than her. Once again he cursed himself for his stupidity. One reckless decision, one moment where thought fled from him, and he was facing the sentence of two months without work, without wages, without food or a place to live.

"Kyle." Her voice felt distant, very far off. "Kyle. I'm going to go get more supplies. Maybe something to help you with the pain. Don't you run away on me now, not until that plaster dries, you hear me?" When Kyle didn't answer, she grabbed him by the cheeks with one hand and forced him to look at her. It was altogether improper and far too intimate, but Kyle wouldn't dare call her on it, not with the dark fire burning just under her eyes. "You hear me?" she repeated.

"Yes'm," he said, swallowing hard.

Everything inside him was cold, numb, save the same slow burn that'd been under his skin since the accident. He hadn't felt this way, this lost and confused since... since he'd last heard from Oliver. He looked around the empty room impassively, waiting for something more terrible to happen, for a storm to rage inside the walls and carry him away in a tornado of wind and despair. It seemed only fitting. His life had gone all to hell, and it was his own damn fault.

"Stop it," he grumbled to himself, trying to snap out of it. "Being so weak and all."

He sighed and settled deeper into the chair. There wasn't nothing he could do for now 'cept wait for the plaster to dry. Once he got his arm settled, he'd figure something out. He always did.

Looking around the room, blowing out bored breaths, he took in the shelves, lined with jars half-full of mysterious powders and liquids. He sat up straighter in his chair, his interest piqued. They were fascinating in a way unfamiliar to him. He wanted to know everything about them—what they were called, where they came from, how they came to be here. He usually didn't much care about the origin of things. What all did that matter anyway? If something was, it was. But these were different somehow. He stood and approached them, resisting the urge to open them all and spread them out across the table in a sea of different colors and textures.

And then there were the books. Lines of books. Old and leather-bound and thick and wonderful. He always liked the smell of books. Any time Oliver brought him a new one, he'd wait til Oliver wasn't looking, then he'd breathe in deep and let the comforting oldness of them swarm inside him, filling him and making him feel somehow more complete than before.

At the end of the lowest shelf was a large text, larger than any he'd ever seen in his life. The gold lettering on the spine was almost worn away into nothing, but he could tell it was important. That this was a book to change lives.

_Surgical Instrumentation and Internal Exploration. _He mouthed the words quietly to himself. Even in his low whisper they sounded powerful and heavy in the silence of the room.

With his good arm, he dragged the thick text off the shelf and brushed the dust away with slow reverent strokes. He set it on the table and flipped to the middle, too eager to learn something—anything—to bother with introductions and chapter organizations. There were charts and diagrams with bits of writing and shorthand in the margins that made no sense to him, but he could feel the power of those notes anyway, feel how each of them was a new bead of knowledge. He studied the drawings intently, fascinated by how the insides looked like tangled rope that made a beautiful kind of sense. How intricate the human body was, how fragile and perfectly miraculous. He didn't quite know how much in God he rightly believed, but looking inside man for the first time had him trusting in something greater than this hard, cold world and its stark, unforgiving beauty.

He turned page after page, devouring as much knowledge as he could, submerging himself in the unfamiliar Latin terms and connecting them to images on the page he could pin to memory.

"You can read."

Her voice startled him.

"I'm sorry," he said reflexively, closing the giant tome and releasing a plume of dust from its ancient pages.

"It was my husband's." Everything about her softened then and she ran slender fingers against the worn leather spine. "He taught me everything, or left me those thing with which to teach myself. You didn't answer my question."

It was an unfair thing to say, seeing as how she didn't really ask a question, but more stated what was plainly obvious and not in need of an answer. Kyle obliged her anyway, because he wanted to hear more.

"Yeah, can read a little bit. Went to school and everything." He didn't want to offer any more detail than that, for reasons he couldn't quite explain, not even to himself.

"Do you want to learn?"

"Sure, why not?" He shrugged with his good shoulder as if it was the most natural thing in the world to say. "Would be more useless than a dead barn owl if I didn't learn nothing."

"No," she said with a slight shake of the head. "This." She ran a hand over the book again. "Do you want to learn this?"

Kyle swallowed. How to answer? Of course he did. It was all he'd ever wanted, but it couldn't ever be. He didn't have the brains for naught much more than what he was doing already. Or what he used to do, seeing as how he was an invalid now and no use to anyone anywhere.

"I don't—I can't..." he stuttered out, unsure where he was going with the response.

"You can. I can teach you." Said nonchalantly, like it wasn't the most ridiculous thing Kyle had ever heard.

"But... why?" He couldn't fathom it. There was no reason at all for her to offer such a thing. He couldn't make it make any sense in his head. Was she tricking him? To what end? He didn't have anything worth being tricked out of.

Leah uncrossed her arms and gestured around the room. "All this, all this work I've put into this place, and it doesn't mean a damn thing because..." She stopped, pushed a hand over the wisps of stray hair above her temple, seemed to gather herself. "Because my husband is gone and there isn't another man around to take his place. Not anymore," she added softly, as if that last part was meant only for herself. "If I apprentice you, I can be more than this."

Kyle parsed it out in his head until it made a strange kind of sense. She needed him. Well, she needed _somebody_, and he'd do in a pinch. "Yeah, all right," he said slowly, still not sure this wasn't an elaborate trick meant to humiliate him and cast him down in some way.

"You got a bed, Kyle? I don't have much to spare. Can fit a mattress in the back room, not much more space than a man can crawl through, but it's not nothing."

Kyle ran his thumb along the raw end of his splint. He didn't have much choice. Not really. And it's not like he wouldn't give up the other life for this, even without needing to. He looked up to see Leah smiling benevolently at him, that same halo shining around her. "Why're you being so nice to me, anyhow?"

"You remind me of someone."

"Yeah?" he prompted. She looked at him with the kind of maternal gaze he'd never gotten from any of the women at the Lakeside.

"I have a boy. A son. Haven't seen him in years. He's a lot like you. Smarter than he looks."

Kyle couldn't help but smile.

"What happened to him?"

Leah looked down at the floor. "Just gone off, you know, like young men do. Can't stay in one place for long, my Schuyler." Her gaze was distant and she sounded altogether lost, and Kyle knew he wasn't always the quickest on the uptake but he thought maybe he figured it out. Why she'd offered to apprentice him, to let him stay, to give him what he needed so he wouldn't feel the itch to run off.

Maybe it wasn't right, knowing what he knew and taking advantage of it. Maybe he should have been a better man than he was, but he wasn't about to throw away the one ripe apple life had given him in a basket full of rotten ones.

* * *

So he brought his horse and he stayed and he moved all his things over to the small room in the back and he learned and he learned some more and the whole world seemed somehow brand new, his life was brand new, and he put away the old things, and he _meant_ it this time. He would forget his life from before now, and if he didn't love Leah Joplin like his own family already, he knew it was only a matter of time.

* * *

**Croop County, Montana Territory. 1883.  
Kyle Lewis, age 20.**

* * *

But his old life didn't want to forget him, it seemed.

He couldn't believe his eyes when he saw him again for the first time.

Oliver, dressed in deputy's brown, standing outside the jailhouse with his thumbs in his pockets. It took his breath away and made him stagger a little on his feet. He might have thought it was an illusion, a mirage caused by too much sun and not enough sleep. How long had he been back? It must have been a while, to see him so settled. Maybe since George ran off and got himself killed and Kyle got booted and Mrs. Fish finally realized how over her head she was without someone to take care of things for her. Not that he didn't think a woman capable of handling her—Leah was all the proof he needed that a woman could fend for herself just fine. It was just that Barbara Fish was certainly no Leah Joplin, didn't have the same kind of mettle in her bones or generosity in her heart.

So she must have sent for Oliver. So easy to banish him from home in the first place. Kyle had long ago let that bitter fire in his chest burn out—or at least he thought he had. Seeing Oliver again, closer than ever yet just as untouchable... well, something was heating up under his skin again, making his chest buzz and his toes twitch.

Because really, if he was being completely honest, all Kyle really wanted was to run over to him and grab him in his arms and laugh with joy at seeing his best friend again.

But he remembered the letter. That awful letter that made him burn with anger at his friend for abandoning him so. He didn't know why he expected any different from any son of Barbara Fish.

He kept on walking, back to the midwifery, head down to obscure his face, cursing himself for getting so excited over nothing. It was stupid. Oliver obviously still resented him for getting sent away, and there wasn't a darned thing Kyle could do about it but live his new life and be the man he always wanted to be. With or without Oliver by his side. He didn't need him. He had his work and he was helping people, like he always wanted, and no damned letter from Oliver could make him feel bad about himself now.

Or at least that's what he told himself.

* * *

Kyle was mixing herbs together with tonic water into a grayish-green paste that would numb the skin when applied. It was one of the first remedies Leah had taught him, and he always felt a pleasant hum of nostalgia when he found himself making a new batch. He scraped his concoction off the wooden mixing board and into a small jar, then lined it up on the shelf with the other medicinal pastes.

A murmur of noise alerted him that two men were approaching the midwifery. Their voices formed into distinguishable words as they got closer.

"...can't believe it. Mr. Perfect with jammed gun. Thought you was gonna burn your damn hand off."

"I didn't," the other voice grumbled, almost too low to hear.

"Here it is. Get the nice lady to fix you up, schoolboy. Then mommy can tuck you in." There was a rough peel of laughter, sounding like sandpaper over stone, and then the crunch of a pair of boots marching off in the direction they came from. The second pair stayed where they were. Fidgeting.

"Hello?" A tentative knock on the door frame. "You busy?"

Kyle's heart froze at the familiar voice. He turned slowly.

"Oliver," he said, voice barely above a whisper. He didn't mean to sound so... so... so breathless. But seeing as how all the air in the room had up and vanished, there wasn't much he could do about it. He braced his arms on the counter behind him, almost as if he were afraid he wouldn't be able to stay upright without the support. Oliver stood in the door way, a dark silhouette against the brightness of the outdoors behind him. Kyle couldn't see his face, but the unmistakable shape of him... he couldn't ever forget the shape of him.

"Kyle. I—" Oliver paused, swallowed, rubbed his hands nervously against his chaps, then tried again. "I never thought I'd see you again."

Kyle couldn't decipher his tone any more than he could his features, hidden in just as much shadow. It wasn't exactly pleased, or nostalgic, or relieved. He didn't want to think it was disappointment, but he was running out of other options.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"I didn't realize you'd be here."

It wasn't the answer Kyle wanted, nor the one he hoped for. It sounded almost like an accusation. Like Kyle wasn't allowed to be anywhere Oliver might happen to come across. He didn't know what he was thinking—it was stupid, trying to fall back into his old forgotten life, into the role of comforter, of protector. Oliver didn't want him. But damn it, he could still _need _him, and that was something. Maybe something pathetic. Maybe something he should have been ashamed of, but he wasn't.

"Said you've got a burn on your hand?" he asked gently. He took a slow step forward, as if approaching an ungelded horse for the first time. His heart clenched painfully at seeing him again, even just this dark outline of him, and he knew he was likely to get more than just his arm broken for the trouble.

"It's nothing," Oliver said. He stepped back away from Kyle, into the sunlit patch just outside the entryway. Kyle only caught the quickest glimpse of them, but his eyes were big and blue and round and maybe he was scared, but maybe he was softening, too.

"I can take a look at it." Kyle started poking into the lids of Leah's medicine jars. "Know I've got some salve 'round here that'll heal it up quicker..."

"No—no thanks," Oliver said, looking anywhere but at Kyle. "I have to go. I have... things." He gestured behind him toward absolutely nothing at all but empty land and gray sky. "Important things to do."

"Oliver, wait—"

Oliver turned back. His eyes weren't soft anymore. "Don't call me that," he said.

And then he was gone.

* * *

(...TBC...)


End file.
